You Can't Take it Back
by fanfar3
Summary: This story is a “jump off” from the sadly short-lived TV show, The Outsiders. This story opens w/ a recap of an episode of that show titled “He was a Greaser, Only Old”. Soda is shot, and Pony’s to blame. And this is the aftermath. Ponyboy’s POV
1. Chapter 1

Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)

Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about _The Outsiders _(book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else). This story is a "jump off" from the (sadly) short-lived TV show, _The Outsiders._ This story opens w/ a recap of an episode of that show titled "He was a Greaser, Only Old". Soda is shot, and Pony's to blame. My videos of this show have worn down and are no longer viewable, so I probably have gotten some names and other small details wrong. And this is the aftermath. Ponyboy's POV

Have you ever messed up so big there's no making it up? Sometimes, I think it's my specialty.

It all started with Tim Shepard. Darry and Tim have been friends since they were kids, but even Darry says most trouble starts with Tim.

I'd been working for the railroad part time after school. The foreman didn't ask how old I was, and I didn't offer it up. Paid workers like me worked up on the bridge build while the county had a chain gang working down below. All the wardens like to tease and taunt the cons. I figured that even if they'd done wrong, it was no reason to treat them like dogs. I mean, Tim's been in jail more than once, but he's a real guy, too. He's got feelings. Pride. Pain. Dreams. The wardens don't care, though.

I stood against the railing that afternoon, looking down at the cons. I was sweating rivers in just my jeans and t-shirt, so I can't imagine what those cons were feeling in their head-to-toe, long-sleeved denims. Baking alive, I'd reckon. McMasters, the chief deputy warden, was the meanest of them all. He stooped down to gulp water from the ladle, and the two cons closest to him watched with obvious longing. When he finished, just to yank their chains, McMasters dumped the rest on the ground, just wasting it. I felt thirsty just watching it. Only thing was, all I had to do was just stroll on over and drink from the drum cooler just off the bridge.

I was still thinking about it as I started the 2 mile walk home, but I came across Tim at the side of the road, hood up on his old Chevy. Talk about a guy that can't catch a break!

He'd just come back from the joint, and his mother turned him out of the house. He tried to show her he'd changed in there this time, that he wanted to make a fresh start. But she just told him he was just like his father….useless. He was too proud to move in with us, even though Darry told him he could have the sofa until he got on his feet. He'd been sleeping in his car most nights. But he'd gotten a job at the power plant, and now he's got a tiny place about a mile from ours.

"Hey," Tim greeted, chewing his trademark toothpick. "What's up at the railroad, kid?"

I grinned. "Just headin' home. Darry's waitin' on my pay. After fixing his truck last month, he's still coming up short on rent. So I'm helpin' out."

"Bum luck for you, huh?"

I shrugged. "It's just until next month, anyway. The bridge'll be finished by then, and nothing else for us to do."

About then the hot little Corvair convertible we'd been watching rumble down the road eased up beside us, and Miss Cherry Valance gave us a smile. She and Tim…well, they're about like she and Dally used to be before he was killed. They get all charged up around each other. They bicker like brother and sister, except I'm pretty sure if Cherry wasn't such a good girl, so afraid of appearances and what her folks would think, she'd be wearing Tim's ring.

"Hey, Ponyboy," she said, smiling in that way of hers…the one that makes me ask myself why I'm not head-over-heels for her, myself. Well. Maybe I was, for a time. But anymore she's just a girl who savvies real good. Probably the only girl I'll ever be able to open my mouth around.

I just nodded at her and smiled.

"Hey, Red," Tim greeted lazily. "Whatcha doin' round these parts?" He put on the drawl more than usual with her.

"Just finishing up at the stables," she said, her usual chilly self when it came to Tim. "Now I'm heading into town to pick up a few things from the A & P. Need a ride in?"

I noticed Tim had pulled a gas can from the trunk of his car, along with a shirt. Up to now he'd been tinkering bare chested under the hood, but even Tim knew you needed clothes on if you were going to get in the car with a lady. But he tossed the shirt through the window of the car, onto the driver's seat and then squinted up at the sky and said it was a good day for a walk.

"It's four miles!" She laughed.

"So?" he asked, patting his flat stomach. Him and Darry have a lot in common there. Nothing to be ashamed about going shirtless.

Cherry's smile faded. "What? No gas money?"

Tim rose up from where he'd been leaning against the door of his car, and his eyes went flat and cold in the way that I remembered but hadn't seen since he got out jail this last time. "I may be a greaser, honey, but I've got a good job at the plant. I manage to save a few bits."

That told me Tim _didn't_ have gas money. Anytime a guy gets his back up over money, it's because he ain't got any. Tim turned back to get his shirt, and I flipped open my wallet and grabbed the first bill I found without looking at it. I slid it easily into his hand, away from Cherry's patient gaze. He flashed me a grin, then ambled over to put the hood down. Then he grabbed the gas can and his old leather jacket and tossed them on the floorboard behind the passenger seat.

"What say, Pony? Wanna tag along? After I gas up, I can give you a ride home."

"Nah," I shook my head. "Darry's waitin' on me. Catch up later?"

"Sure. Save me some chocolate cake."

I grinned again, and I watched them rumble out of sight on the dusty road. I wasn't sure how I was going to explain it to Darry, but it was just a buck, after all. Just enough to get Tim by until he got paid on Friday.

Well, I probably don't have to tell you that I didn't give Tim just a buck. I gave him the five by mistake. Seeing as how I only make seven dollars a day, it was a pretty big mistake. Darry lit into me but good over it, spouting his usual "you don't ever use your head" crap and asking me where the money went. I told him I lent it to a friend who needed it more than I did.

"_Nobody _needs this money more than we do!" he yelled, glaring at me with those icy eyes of his.

"Darry," I said, "rent's not due until tomorrow. I can bring you the money straight from work, and you can drop it off at the landlord's on the way home."

Darry glared at me from the sink, his arms folded across his chest in that way that still makes me cringe. When he looks like that you only hope he's not aiming it at you, and since he was aiming it at me, I had to force myself not to fidget. "You'd better be at the site right after the railroad. I mean it, Pony."

I nodded. When he turned back to the dishes, albeit roughly, I let the relief come. But wouldn't you know, not five minutes later, Tim strolled in the door with a six pack, Soda on his heels. He gave one to Darry, who smirked in thanks, and he offered one to Soda, but Soda said no.

"I'll put 'em on ice, though," he said, stowing the six pack in the icebox.

When I gave him my best silent but angry look, he just cracked a grin and said, "There was some change left. Don't look at me like that. I'll pay you back on Friday."

Yep. Darry was right. When there's trouble, there's Tim Shepard.


	2. Chapter 2

Std Disclaimer: I don't own anything even remotely relating to the Outsiders, but this is my own work

Std Disclaimer: I don't own anything even remotely relating to the Outsiders, but this is my own work. Blah, blah, blah.

My tapes of the TV show won't play anymore. I seem to remember that Buck ran a combo of the DX/ a bar in the show, though, and he was Steve and Soda's boss, which was cool. So far, yes, it is pretty much following the script and will continue to mostly follow it (with maybe a couple minor blips) for a bit longer. Hang in there. It will diverge and go its own way eventually. 

The next day, after school, I hustled to the railroad pretty quick. The cons had been at it since dawn, and they looked pretty miserable. The sun was withering, and they were drying out. I didn't go up on the bridge right away. Instead, when McMasters had his back turned, I set the water pail down in front of the two guys I thought looked the most desperate for it.

I'm pretty sure I saw something like gratitude flash across one of their faces. But before either of them could drink, McMasters knocked the ladle from the guy's chained hands with the butt of his rifle. I tried to convey an apology, but McMasters barked at me to get up the bridge where I belonged.

After that, I was too busy to worry about anything down below. Just before quitting time, the lumber trucks arrive and roll up on the bridge to deliver rails, ties, and spikes for the next day's work. Anybody who is still up there when they come through has to lean back against the railings to allow them enough space to get by, because it's a mighty close fit. I hate getting caught up there when the trucks come through, because if you want to know the truth, I ain't too crazy about the three story drop to the shallow creek below. The fall would pretty much spell death for any guy unlucky enough to take it.

That afternoon, that guy was me. One second, I dutifully leaned back against the railing, sopping sweat off my brow with the tail of my flannel over-shirt, and the next, I went wide-eyed with terror when it gave way behind me. It happened so fast that it's all a blur, but I remember the guys scrambling around, yelling in panicked voices. And then I heard McMasters booming at the cons below, ordering them to get under the bridge and catch me if I fell.

I managed to catch hold of the rail I'd been standing on, but it wasn't a good grip, and I was slipping fast. My blood rushed in my ears, and I clamped down as hard as I could until my fingers liked to have snapped. Bile rose in my throat as my undershirt, which I'd taken off and tucked into the back of my jeans, fluttered down to the creek. One of the guys caught my hand, and another grabbed the sleeve of the flannel shirt I was wearing at the cuff, but it was old and it tore. The whole damn arm came off, which did little to help me.

A panicked gasp rose from my throat as I began to slip out of the other one's grip, but all at once another strong arm found my collar and hauled upwards. It held long enough for the other faceless guy to get hold of my belt, and the next thing I knew, I was flat on my face on the bridge, panting in terror.

Someone pulled me up. The crew chief, Carey (who was built like a Mack truck), sat me down on the drum cooler and chuckled nervously.

"He'll be okay in a minute," Carey told the crowd of guys the closed around us, patting my shoulder. "Must've scared a couple years off, though."

_You ain't a woofin', _I wanted to say, but I'd lost the power of speech.

"Uh-oh, Carey," someone said as the world spun dizzy circles around me, "looks like he's gonna pass out!"

"Hey!" someone else called as Carey guided my face down toward my knees, "that's Sodapop Curtis' kid brother!"

"Breathe, kid," Carey ordered, rubbing my back. "You're gonna be okay." After a short pause, he said, "Can't say the same about that shirt."

The guys, meanwhile, were still talking about Soda. "…the one that works at the DX, ain't he?" This came from a guy named James Raney. He was always teasing me about my name, but he didn't mean nothing by it. I focused on mundane thoughts like these and tried not to think about where I'd just been. I was just about to the point where I could stand on my own when Carey decisively hauled me to my feet and said,

"C'mon, kid, let's go see your brother at the DX."

I shook on the short ride over. It was the sweltering last week of April, but it felt like December to me. Someone fished my soggy t-shirt out of the creek, and I'd put it on since my flannel was all torn up. Darry'd be steamed about that shirt. It was old, but up to now, it had still been in good shape.

I leaned against the door of Carey's truck and closed my eyes. _Don't throw up. Don't throw up,_ I chanted silently as my insides quivered with every jarring bump.

I guess Soda was already out at the pumps, because by the time I heard the _ding!, _he was already opening the door.

"Hey, Pony," he said cheerfully, until he looked a little closer. "You okay? Gosh, you're shaking like a leaf!"

I just nodded and slid bonelessly out of the truck, willing my knees not to buckle.

"Glory!" Steve exclaimed. "He's white as a sheet!"

"And wet," Soda frowned. "How'd you get wet, Pony?" He put a hand on my shoulder, watching me closely.

Carey quickly explained how my shirt had gone for a swim and how I was a damn sight lucky I didn't go in after it. Soda thanked him, wide-eyed, as he tucked my day's pay in Soda's front pocket and told me to take it easy.

"Little something extra in there for the scare, too," Carey added, hopping back into his truck. Soda had to pull me back so I didn't get my feet rolled over.

"Snap out of it, Pony," he said, shaking me a little. "Let's go inside, find you a dry shirt."

Instead of taking me into the machine shop, Soda steered me in through the Ace, a little shack of a bar which is on the same property, slumped next to the garage. No sooner than we got to the back room, Buck Merrill shoved a shot glass in my hand and ordered me to drink, which I did. It burned going down, and I coughed. He just laughed.

"Shoot, Buck, Darry's gonna have a fit if he smells that stuff on Pony's breath," Soda complained, catching the spare DX shirt that Steve had retrieved. He handed it to me. I just looked at it for a minute as if to wonder what I was holding.

"Well, at least he's getting some color back," Buck chuckled and went back out to the bar.

I fumbled around with the shirt and managed to pull it on, but I didn't get to button it before Darry stormed into the back room mad as a hornet, and shoved me back against a shaky tower of stacked liquor boxes. They rattled fearfully under his furious voice.

"When I tell you to do something, you _do _it!" he backed off a step, but then came back at me again. I almost closed my eyes and whimpered, he was that scary. "I told you to be at McAllister's place by five, and here you are, goofing off with Soda. The landlord's threatening to _evict _us. I told him to met me at the house at six-thirty, which means _I _had to knock off early." He stepped back again, shaking his head, rubbing his neck with one hand and looking for all the world that he was really struggling not to kill me.

All the time that Darry was yelling at me, Soda was trying to butt in. "Darry, hold on, you­–" and "Would you just listen for a—" and "You got it all wrong, he—" Finally, Darry got sick of it and wheeled around to bark at Soda. I shrugged out from under his towering presence and slammed out of the back room. As I went, I heard Soda exclaim, "Darry, Pony was almost _killed_ today!"

_Wouldn't matter to him, anyway, _I thought angrily. It just wasn't fair. No matter what, Darry was always gonna see me as his goofy, scatterbrained little brother. Never mind that I was working just like they were. Never mind that I didn't mean to give Tim the five. Just never mind, never mind, never mind. Darry didn't, wouldn't, and never will care.

I was in the bed of the truck when Soda emerged from the smoky darkness of the bar. I didn't smile when he ruffled my hair and handed me a Coke. Darry slid into the truck without looking at me, and he didn't say a word. That was all right by me. I probably would've started bawling like an idiot, anyway, and Darry isn't somebody you cry in front of. You just don't.


	3. Chapter 3

**Std Disclaimer: I don't own anything even remotely relating to the Outsiders, but this is my own work. Blah, blah, blah.**

* * *

You'd think Darry'd let a guy have a little peace, but the second I came out of the shower and handed Soda his DX shirt back, Darry asked where my school books were. Hell. I didn't give them another thought, what with almost falling off a bridge and all. When I didn't answer, Darry told me to go do the supper dishes.

Lucky for me, Carey pulled up not ten minutes later and explained how I'd forgotten my books in all the commotion. I could hear them talking in the living room. Carey told them everything was in a big uproar because when I was dangling off the bridge, two cons overpowered one of the wardens and escaped with his gun.

"Did they catch them yet?" Soda asked. I could tell just by his voice he was fascinated.

"Nope. Police are saying to be careful since they're armed and dangerous and desperate."

Seeing as how I was at the sink cleaning up supper, I didn't catch everything that was said, but I felt a kick of gratitude when Carey joked, "That's one tough kid brother you've got. Any other guy, if it happened to them, woulda passed out cold. Me included. He came close, but he kept it together real good."

Soda laughed. "Yeah, he's okay. He's in the kitchen doing the dishes right now."

"Well, take it easy on him. We need him to help us finish up."

"Will do, Carey," Darry said. I heard footsteps as he saw Carey to the door. "Thanks for bringing these by."

It was a lie, though. He never takes it easy on me.

Sure enough, the next night, he had a fit at me for bringing home a "D" on a math quiz even though he knows it's my worst subject. Ever since that soc kicked me in the head, I can't seem to keep all the numbers and formulas straight in my head. But even before that, if there was a rare "C" on my report card, it was in math. And never mind I didn't sleep real well, trying not to replay the events of the day and all.

I could only take so much of Darry's hammering at me. Finally, I quit looking at my feet and stormed to the door. What he said right then froze the blood in my veins.

"You walk out that door, Pony, this time you don't come back."

It tore at me. I knew we both remembered all too well the last time I'd run out and not come back, and the threat in his words gave me pause. Seems like a whole decade passed by in the space of that minute that I stood there, one foot on the porch, my hand splayed on the screen while a movie of the past played in my head in no more time than it took to draw my next breath.

_Grabbing Johnny from the lot. The fountain. The horror I woke up to. The loud party. Finding Dallas. The train. The church. The beginning of the end of it all. _

Worst thing was, I'd stood in that hospital corridor, squeezing Darry half to death, believing things were different. When he'd choked out his fears about losing me, I thought we'd find a new peace. But I guess it was more truce than peace. I reckon that's why I kept on going.

Sometimes when I get hot I jog a couple miles to Dixon Pond and take a swim, and then I'm not hot anymore. So I tried that. I didn't have Johnny or anyone to be with, and though I tried to tell myself I wasn't going to go slinking back in the front door and give Darry the satisfaction, I knew I'd be in my own bed by ten. It was a school night. Darry'd kill me.

Nothing like the shock of cold water to cool a guy off. I'd barely stripped to my shorts and dived in did I come face to face with the lifeless eyes of a man dressed in long-sleeved denims. Later, I'd be really glad that none of the gang had been around to hear me holler up two octaves like a caterwauling alleycat. It got cut short, though, by the con still chained up to him. Luckily or not, he hadn't met the same unfortunate fate. I trembled at the feel of cold steel against my temple.

"You scream again, I'll shoot you. Make no mistake," he said softly. He sounded the way tires sounded on the old quarry roads. I waited, not even breathing, until he asked, "You gonna scream?"

I shook my head under his giant palm. It wasn't the only part of me shaking, that's for sure. He let me go, telling me to get out of the water and not to make any fast moves. I could barely clamber out, and I was more than grateful to plop backward on the silty bank. I was silent and shivering as he followed, using the ankle chain to pull the dead guy closer. A fresh shudder rocketed through me and I nearly lost supper. I guess he saw that, because he rasped,

"Imagine how sick it makes me."

With the gun still on me, he studied me and I sneaked furtive glances at him. It was his eyes that did it. They looked just like Dally Winston's eyes, and I couldn't help but think he couldn't be all bad. People got awful desperate sometimes, and I supposed his time was now. But underneath the mean, there was something else that I couldn't put my finger on, just like I'd never been able to name it with Dally.

"You're the kid that gave me the water," he said flatly. I didn't know what to say, but I gave him a tiny nod. He brushed back his wet hair. "You're the one that almost fell off that bridge."

I dipped my head again, and pulled my knees up to my chest for warmth. Once the sun goes down, no matter how relentless the heat had been, it fled on magic feet.

He fired questions at me in that same dull way. No emotion to his voice at all, just the flat, hard demand. What was I doing out there? What was my name, where did I live? Had anyone seen me? Did anyone know I was there? When was I supposed to be home?

He started to sound a lot like Darry. I said too much. I keep my mouth shut good around the fuzz, but that gun had a way of making me a regular chatterbox. I thought that was pretty funny considering how cops have guns, too.

"You keep talking about your brothers," he said after a short but excruciating silence. "Ain't you got parents?"

I shook my head. "C-car wreck," I stammered. It didn't matter whether he knew I was scared or thought I was cold. So long as he didn't get jumpy and foolish, I'd talk all night long.

He told me he'd had family once, before he messed up. Said they were the most important thing, and if I had a brain in my head, I'd stay out of trouble. Then he sort of shook himself and asked where he could lay low. I felt like I owed him an answer, seeing as how I'd told him there was a countywide manhunt on for him and his buddy.

"Hell," he said ruefully, "Who am I kidding? With this guy attached to me, I'll probably get eaten by whatever comes along to nibble on him." He gestured dismally to the gently bobbing body. I wondered just then who might miss that guy. Who might curl up and cry over him. No one was all bad. Leastaways, I hadn't met anyone all bad yet. There was always something else. Another layer to unfold. Maybe close to the surface, maybe so deep that light don't shine on it. But there.

His rough voice brought me back to the moment again. "And if the animals don't get me, I'm easy enough prey for McMasters."

And that's when I felt sorry for him. No one should have to live like that…cornered. Humiliated. Tied up to a dead man. But there was just enough cynical Darry in me to retort,

"It was probably a bad idea to shoot him, then."

"Are you kidding?" He barked a bitter laugh. "The wardens had that honor. I hated the guy, but I'm not stupid enough to kill my chance at freedom." After a minutes pause, he said, "I could sure use something like a file. Get him off me."

I didn't answer, and I didn't look at him, but I sure felt him watching me. Waiting.

"Go on, Ponyboy," he said finally. "Go home to your brothers." I didn't move. The sad note at the end there left me wondering. My heart pounded furiously as it warred with the little ghost of Darry's face sneering at me. _What, are you stupid? RUN! _"What?" he asked sharply enough that I jumped. "You want me to change my mind?"

I snapped out of it, grabbed my clothes, and didn't look back until I hit civilization. I stopped long enough to dress, but then I kept on running. I didn't care if Darry locked the door on me. The porch had to be better than the pond just now.


	4. Chapter 4

_**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else) Side notes: In the TV show, someone thought it was appropriate for Soda and Pony to share a room but not a bed, so they've got twin beds now. Just for anyone who might be wondering if I remember the book! Also, I can't remember for the life of me what that "old greaser's" name was…so I made one up that may or may not be close to what it actually was.**_

* * *

Of course, Darry hadn't locked the door, and he wasn't in his room. And of course, when I banged in the screen door, he pitched a fit at me about the filthy state I was in and expected to know where I'd been. But something gave way in me, and I managed to look him straight in the eye and answer him without a hint of shame.

"You tell me not to come back," I said, unblinking, "but then you wonder where I've been. You can't have it both ways, Darry!"

And I left him standing there, my words hanging in the air. I slammed the bedroom door behind me and was surprised when it stayed closed. I tried to read the chapter my history teacher assigned, but I kept waiting for him to barge in and yell at me some more. When the door finally opened, it wasn't Darry who barged in. It was Soda.

"Thanks a lot, Pony," he said bitterly, tugging off his shirt and pitching it in the laundry basket on the floor of our closet. "You knew I had a date with Peggy tonight. Instead, I'm out searching the whole damn countryside for you. Where you been?"

I shrugged. I guess he didn't really expect an answer because he stomped down the hall and a second later, I heard the arthritic creak of the bathroom tap. I put my face back in the history text, but I didn't read a single sentence. Soon enough, Soda came stomping back into our room and flopped on his bed with Darry's battered copy of _The Carpetbaggers_. He's not much for reading, so I knew he was trying to stay mad at me.

I'd been thinking about that con nonstop, and I wanted to talk to Soda about it. But I was afraid. I mean, I can talk to Soda about anything, but I was worried if I mentioned it, it might bring him to our door or something. It was stupid to think, but I couldn't shake it, so I just said,

"I'm sorry about Peggy. I didn't think you'd cancel your date over it."

Soda dropped the book. He can't stay mad at me any more than I can at him. "I figured you might take Darry literally, even though he was just mad. He shouldn't have said something like that to you, Pony, and I sure lit into him for it when I got home and he told me you took off again." His eyes were serious for once, without that spark of amusement they usually carry. "You know I hate getting in the middle."

I nodded and went to sit on Soda's bed. "Soda," I frowned, "is it wrong to help a guy in trouble? I mean, like when Dally robbed that store and we were gonna hide him? Except, well, you know." I looked down at the floor. None of us liked talking about that day.

"I think you gotta see the whole picture, Pony," he replied thoughtfully. That's just what I like about Soda. He takes everything I say seriously, even when I say something that's stupid or wrong. "Dally was a little hard, but he was a lot good underneath. I think a lot of folks are like that." He raised a shoulder. "Why? Is this about that guy you helped the other day?"

He rolled to his feet and pulled something from the pocket of his jeans before tossing them into the laundry basket, too. "Tim said to give this to you," he said, pulling back his covers.

I looked down at the five dollar bill he'd pressed into my hand. Soda cracked a sleepy grin as he bounced into bed and pulled the sheet up to his waist. "You did the right thing, Pony," he said, yawning now that all the excitement of looking for me was wearing off. "Darry's over it now, anyway."

"Sure he is," I rolled my eyes and climbed into my own bed after switching off the lamp on the table between us.

"He is," Soda insisted. My eyes adjusted quickly in the moonlight, and I looked over at him all washed in blue. His eyes were serious again. "Besides, he's been eatin' himself up over how he treated you. But he's Darry. He's not good at apologies, even when he's real sorry." Soda rolled toward me then. "When I told him what happened on the bridge, he went white as a ghost. Buck almost had to give him a free shot, too," he chuckled and grinned that trademark, rakish grin that all the girls loved him for. I couldn't help but grin back at him in the dark.

I tried to picture Darry worried about me. It shouldn't have been so hard, what with the way he cried the night of the church fire. But it was. Darry'd long gone back to being his cold-eyed, somber self. Hardly smiling, never happy unless he was barking at someone for something. And mostly seeming irritated at everything I did or was.

"'Night, Soda," I sighed.

"G'night, Pony," he breathed, already half asleep.

But I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking about that con, trapped so close to a dead man. I felt sorry again. I squirmed in my bed thinking about how he was probably starting to smell. To rot. I thought I might go nuts stuck watching something like that. Waiting for the same thing to happen to me. I tried to figure out what to do long after Soda started to snore softly.

* * *

The next morning at breakfast, Soda was acting jumpy. He kept looking at me and grinning, but he was trying hard not to. Darry made breakfast, which he doesn't usually do. We mostly eat cereal or fruit unless it's the weekend, but he said he couldn't sleep so he made pancakes. It occurred to me that he might be trying to apologize without really apologizing, because he knows I love pancakes. I like butter and syrup on mine, so I was still buttering when Darry sat down and tipped the pitcher over his own stack.

Soda started to giggle, and Darry's eyes narrowed. He gave us both a quizzical look and poked his finger into the stream still cascading over his pancakes. "What is this?" he asked, his eyes narrowing again. "Corn oil?"

Soda lost it, leaping up from the table and darting out the back door, Darry hot on his heels. "Soda, you doofus!"

I didn't even realize I had decided anything about that con, but I found myself frantically stuffing apples and bread into a paper sack along with the hammer and spike Darry kept under the kitchen sink. Then I grabbed my books and the sack, rolled my buttered shortstack into a fat pancake cigar and darted out the front door.

Just my luck, Darry chose that moment to try to talk about the last couple of days. I told him it was no big deal even though it was. I just wanted to get out of there. I had to get to Dixon Pond before school.

* * *

I wasn't sure he'd still be there, actually, but I figured it would be tough to get anywhere dragging a dead guy after you. I hadn't really planned on going back there. I hadn't set up any kind of signal with him to let him know it was me, so he pulled the gun again, but luckily he didn't have an itchy finger. When he realized who it was, he lowered the gun a little, but still kept in on me.

I meant to just drop off the stuff, but he ordered me to sit down, so I did. He still had that gun, after all. He seemed content just to work on that ankle chain, and I guess he'd come to trust me just a little because he told me he just wanted a quiet life away from trouble and wished he knew where to find it. Then he asked why I came back, seein' as how he'd given me my freedom. So I told him the truth, that I didn't figure anyone should be chained up to another person like a dog, whether dead or alive.

He sorta grinned, if you could call it that. More a wince or a grimace, really. But he rasped, "You're a good kid." Then the ankle chain slipped out from under his blows and he fired off a stream of muttered curses. "Ain't you supposed to be at school?" he asked me, sounding for all the world like Darry now.

I shrugged. "Yeah."

He gave up on the chain for a minute and poked through the bag for an apple.

"You're late, though, ain't you?" he asked between large, sloppy bites. When I nodded, he told me I'd better get on, then.

I figured he was right. I'd catch it from Darry again if I didn't, so I scooped up my books and said,

"If you follow the pond east, it'll feed into a creek. Follow that for another mile, and you'll come up on an old barn to the right. No one uses it anymore. You can sit in there until the 3 a.m. train to Windrixville tomorrow morning. Train station's about two miles north of that barn."

He nodded, squinting up at me in the harsh morning light. "I'd have a better chance if I had some street clothes," he answered, his eyes resting hopefully on mine.

"I'll see if I can work it out," I said, backing away. "But I ain't promising anything."

As I started to jog, I heard him start on the chain again.


	5. Chapter 5

_**Std Disclaimer: I don't own anything even remotely relating to the Outsiders, but this is my own work. Blah, blah, blah.**_

* * *

Sure enough, when I got home, Darry was already there on account of the pouring rain. You can't roof in the rain. And he was furious. I'd shown up at school an hour late, even though he'd seen me leave early that morning.

"Jesus, Pony, I thought sure you'd been jumped and were lying hurt someplace! Then they call and tell me no, you just showed up for World History, and you're just fine." He had me up against the wall now. As usual, all I could see fit to do was stare at my shoes. "Are you gonna tell me where you were?"

I shook my head. "I-I had something I had to do, Darry," I stammered. I was surprised he admitted he'd been worried about me. He usually just got on with the lecture. But then he shook me a little and asked what it was that was so important, and I twisted out of his grip.

It had been all over school that morning, which is how I found out the con's name was Carl Rossey. It didn't hit me until school let out that he'd never told me that, himself. Guess he didn't really trust anyone, after all. I didn't know why that bothered me, but it did. I wouldn't go so far as to say I was eager to help him. My stomach got all twisted in knots when I thought about it, like Darry and Rossey each had one end and were playing tug of war. Keep out of trouble on Darry's side, and help out a man who had no dignity left on the other. And each side just as strong as the other.

"Pony!" Darry was irritated. I got the feeling it wasn't the first time he'd said my name.

I shrugged. "A guy I knew needed some help. So I helped. I missed one English class. Big deal."

That was the wrong thing to say. Darry finally obliged me and launched off on a lecture, but it was the same old one about how he doesn't know what the heck goes through my head. This time for fun, he threw in a part about wanting to know how I come up with thinking that it's okay for me to blow off school and not get in trouble for it. How I don't use all those brains God gave me for anything worthwhile. The usual.

When he wound down a little, I ducked past him and into my room. I was surprised again when he didn't follow me, just like he hadn't the other night. That wasn't like Darry. When he was mad, there was usually no hiding from him. He'd just crash through the house after you, hollering all the way, until he was all hollered out. Except with me, he never seemed to be hollered out.

I started shoving clothes into a tattered paper sack that Soda must have left on the floor of the closet. Soda's always leaving weird things in weird places. Once Darry found his truck keys in the fridge behind the milk, and it was no joke. And Darry thinks _I'm_ the one who's scatterbrained.

Soda's voice brought me back from inside my head, and I almost hit the ceiling. He's like a damn cat, padding around after you so quietly that you like to trip over him. I never heard him come in, but when Soda saw what I was doing, he was anything but silent.

"C'mon, Pony," he shook his head, desperation creeping into his voice, "we've been down this road before. Last time you ran away, you were almost killed. Let's talk about this. We'll work it out like always," he begged, squeezing my shoulder. He had grease under his fingernails and smelled like an oil rig, so I knew Darry hadn't even let him shower before sending him in to talk sense to me.

I rolled my eyes. "I ain't running away," I told him.

"Hey!" he said suddenly, grabbing at the sack, "that's my shirt!"

I swatted his hand away. "It's the one with the grease stain. You said you hate it, anyway."

He watched me toss in a pair of socks. "C'mon, Ponyboy. What're you up to?"

I turned and looked him square in the eye. I couldn't lie to Soda and wouldn't want to. But he'd help Darry skin me if he really knew what I was doing, so I only said, "There's a guy out at the old Winslow barn. He needs some help."

Seein' as how the Winslow barn is abandoned and that most times, if someone is there, it ain't for any good reason, he was worried. "Who?" he asked me, watching my face intently. When I said nothing, just looked at the floor, he asked, "Don't tell me Tim's in trouble again!"

"It's just a guy I know," I shrugged. "You and Darry don't know him."

Soda was torn. When one of the gang needed you, you didn't ask questions. You just did as you were told. But the fact that I was his kid brother and tended to make more trouble for myself than anyone else ever could made him think twice. "Ponyboy, Darry'll skin you if you leave the house again tonight."

"So _you _go. That way, Darry won't get any more mad than he already is." I stood there with the rolled up sack clutched in my fist, stretched out toward him. He looked at it for a minute. And then he sighed heavily, snatched it from my grip, and turned to the door. Before he disappeared through it, he used it to point at me.

"This ends it, Pony," he said. Then he waited until I nodded my agreement. "You're gonna make Darry nuts if you keep this up." I nodded again, and he slapped the door jamb by way of goodbye.

I didn't know it right then, but that was almost the last time I ever saw Soda. I don't know whether it was _The Old Man and the Sea _hitting me in the nose as I dozed off or the sound of the phone, but I woke up and saw by the clock that Soda had been gone for almost two hours. Even at a snail's pace, he could've made the trip in one.

There wasn't any reason to think so, but I knew something was wrong, so I was already halfway to the bedroom door when Darry shouted,

"Pony! Get up! Soda's hurt!"

He was on the phone to somebody, frantically demanding an ambulance out at the phone booth on Rte 412, just past old Winslow's barn. _Rossey. _I knew. Somehow, I knew. Rossey got jumpy, and Soda got shot. My knees went to jelly, my heart to my feet, and for the second time in two days I thought sure I'd drop my supper at them, too. Then Darry grabbed me by my arm to get me moving, slinging me toward the truck.

"A man just called me, said 'Your brother's been shot,' and hung up," Darry said. He seemed dazed. "I could barely understand him." He waited a beat. "Ponyboy, do you know what Soda would be doing out at Old Man Winslow's? Did he say anything to you?"

And for the first time in my life, I lied to my brother. Not in words, because I couldn't even squeak one out. I just shook my head numbly and wondered if there were any words big enough for Darry to holler if he ever found out it was all my fault.

* * *

**_A little short, I know. But it was the natural stopping point. _**


	6. Chapter 6

Std Disclaimer: I don't own anything even remotely relating to the Outsiders, but this is my own work

_**Std Disclaimer: I don't own anything even remotely relating to the Outsiders, but this is my own work. Blah, blah, blah.**_

--

Darry took the corner into the parking lot at Emergency at around fifty, the ambulance wailing to a stop just ahead of us.

I've never been more scared in my life than seeing Soda on that stretcher, red stained gauze on his right shoulder and his eyes shut. He isn't even still when he sleeps, but he wasn't moving now. We ran alongside a ways. Darry called his name out, and Soda woozily lifted his head. He must've seen the icy fear in our eyes, because he squeezed back when Darry clasped his left hand.

"Jo-ohn Wayne gets shot all the time and don't even flinch," he said weakly. "What a crock…"

I tried to smile. Darry did, too. But neither of us really quite made it. And then they slammed him through the doors to the operating room, where we couldn't follow.

_Please, please, please. Please._ That single word echoed to a scream inside my head. You never thought about Soda getting hurt. He was just too happy. He almost never got hot, and if he did, it lasted about as long as a breeze or was carried out with one. In his mind, there were just too many good times to be had, and thinking about the consequences would only eat into the fun.

I wondered just how it went down in that old barn. I pictured him banging his way in, unruffled. Just a guy needed a little help, is all. No reason to knock or to announce himself. I wondered if he got to see any of that other thing I thought I'd seen past the hardness in Rossey's eyes. And I hated Rossey. He'd just as well have shot me, too. Then it hit me. Was he the man on the phone? Did he tell Darry about Soda?

Darry didn't say much, except to ask if I was sure Soda hadn't said anything, even something offhand. And I lied again. Or, at least, I shook my head again. Darry would never speak to me again if he found out it was my fault. And the--

I got dizzy and started to shake as I realized that the fallout was more than just Soda being hurt, though that was more than enough on its own. The state would be all over Darry about this one. And he'd look like some Grade A sucker. See how well he looks out for his brothers? The state would ask the judge. Do you still think these boys should stick together?

Darry's hand on my shoulder made me jump. "He's gonna be okay, Pony," he said softly. But when I forced myself to meet his eyes, I could see he was trying to talk himself into it. I ducked away as he rubbed the back of my head. I didn't deserve his comfort. I was the reason Soda was here. Me and my stupid head. Maybe Darry was right. Maybe I never would smarten up about life and people and the way things are. Maybe I never would have a lick of sense.

I thought for sure Darry would send me home any minute. I had school the next day, and it was almost one in the morning. But I guess he knew I wouldn't go for it. Or he didn't want me walking home alone.

At a quarter to two, the surgeon finally came out just as Deputy Simpson walked in. Figured. He'd hated Dally Winston, he still hated Tim and Curly, and he was beginning not to like us much, either. He saw what most everyone else saw when they looked at us. Troublemakers. Delinquents. Hoodlums. Scum. If there's a committee to break the three of us up, he's the chairman. Sometimes I'd bet he was psychic, the way he shows up in our most shining moments. This time, though, it was the gunshot that brought him in.

The surgeon turned to him first, nodding gravely. "Got a souvenir for you, Hank," he said, passing him a specimen container with a lump of bloody bullet in it. Hell, they probably shot skeet together down at the range in Muskogee. Turning to us, he was matter-of-fact, just talking to another no account hood and his little hood brother. "He's a very lucky kid. Missed everything important. But he won't be playing football anytime soon."

"Can we see him?" I croaked hopefully, almost sick with relief. So weak with it, I swayed a little, and Darry squeezed my shoulder.

"He'll be in recovery for the next few hours. You can see him for a few minutes after that." The surgeon nodded at Deputy Simpson. "That bullet came from one of your guns," he added. "Prison guard issue."

Simpson's eyebrows shot upward about the same time as Darry's did, and because Darry still had a hand on my shoulder, I felt him go stiff as a board. Simpson just smirked coldly at us. "Found some clothes and food in the barn at the old Winslow place." He hitched up his belt, so self-satisfied I thought he'd bump headfirst into the ceiling. "Why do you suppose Soda was helping those escaped cons?"

Darry looked shocked. "Soda wouldn't do that," he said firmly, as certain of it as he was his own name.

"Then what was he doing out there?"

Darry didn't have an answer, though I could almost feel him struggle for one. But Simpson didn't really expect an answer. He just grinned in that reptilian way of his and walked away. I swayed again, and Darry told me to sit down. Then he told me to stay put, he'd be right back. I didn't argue. I'd never argue with him again if it meant there was any chance he'd never find out the real reason Soda was laid up in recovery. But I knew it was just a matter of time.

Darry came back with a paper cup of coffee for himself and a Dixie cup of water for me. "There's a fountain around the corner if you need more," he said. And then he put his coffee down on the little table between our hard plastic waiting room chairs and rubbed his face with both hands. Seeing him so worried about Soda made my insides twist up. I couldn't drink anything.

I looked down toward the emergency entrance. Simpson was down there, talking to the admitting clerk. Gunshot wounds had to be reported to the sheriff's office, and the sheriff's office had to do a full investigation. And that meant we were in big, big trouble. The judge had been pretty plain. Stay out of trouble, he'd said, or I'll be forced to reconsider this decision. That was the deal. And I broke it.

The doors swung open, and Simpson turned to see who was coming through. He looked annoyed when he saw it was Two-Bit. Two-Bit just pasted a big, goofy smile on his face and saluted him.

The smile faded, though, as he nodded at Darry and Darry nodded at him. "How's Sodapop?" I'd never seen him so solemn. He was more fidgety than usual, too, shaking his car keys.

"Pony, go home and get some sleep," Darry told me. "You've got school."

So that was it. Darry had called me a ride. I shook my head. "I want to see Soda," I argued.

"You heard the doctor," Darry said quietly. "He's gonna be okay. I'll bring you by after school tomorrow."

Two-Bit, having heard all he needed to, which was that Soda would be okay, punched my shoulder lightly and said, "C'mon, Pony. I'll keep you company until Mr. Muscles gets home." He saluted Darry, too. He grinned, but it died quickly.

I didn't say anything on the drive home, and neither did Two-Bit. I think he wanted to. I think he had a million questions. But I guess he realized I didn't have any answers he'd want to hear.

I tried, but I couldn't sleep. Which was funny, because I'd never felt more tired in my whole life. All I could think about was Rossey and that gun. An inch farther over or down, and Soda might not be alive. I saw that red gauze and the way Soda's skin had looked…damp and ashy. His eyes had been glassy, sort of like Johnny's had been just before…

_Stay gold, Ponyboy._

I squeezed my eyes shut and sobbed, fumbling blindly out of my bed. I dove face first into Soda's pillow, and it was like he was right there. He could scrub for a week but the smell of gasoline, Black Jack gum, and Burma-Shave never quite left him. I imagined that he was right there, facedown on the mattress beside me, back before the guys from the State suggested that we should have our own beds.

But I still couldn't sleep. I rolled quietly to my feet, which were still bare and probably really dirty since Darry had pulled me out of the house earlier without my shoes. I crept out of my room on those feet and saw Two-Bit sacked out on the sofa. He didn't move as I went past him. I waited for his voice to call out to me as I eased open the screen door. It groaned, anyway, but Two-Bit slept on.

I'd really only intended to sit out on the porch and wait for Darry to come home. I almost jumped outta my skin when a shadow moved in the corner. But I realized in the next instant that it was Tim Shepard lying on the old couch Darry had salvaged from a curb three streets down. It sagged in the middle, and the fabric was fraying off, but he liked to lie out there in the summer and look at the sky.

"Hey, Hemingway," Tim said sleepily.

He called me that sometimes. It goes back to when he got out of the joint the last time. His old lady threw him out of the house, telling him he was no better than his father. Darry was his oldest friend, but even Darry didn't want him coming around. I was the only one that noticed something different about him. He caught me working on an assignment for English class one day, and he'd snatched it from me with a smirk. But then he'd read it. It was an essay on Pygmalion, about the way people assume things about other people just by the way they look or talk, and how they set about to change them into something more acceptable, never realizing that the person was acceptable just as they were all along.

"Well, hell, Hemingway," he'd said, scratching the side of his head as he slid it back down on the table in front of me, "if you got that down, I don't guess there's much more you need to know." And then he dug out an old piece of typewriter paper so worn that it was almost separating along the folds. It skittered across the table top, and I opened it gingerly, afraid it would turn to dust in my hands. Someone had carefully sketched a palm tree so real you could almost feel the stringy, scratchy surface of the trunk. Or the grit of the sand on the island that it sat upon. The heat of the sun. The cool relief of the water. _Paradise._ Just that one word, and I never saw Tim Shepard the same way again. I don't think he saw me the same, either.

"Hey."

He nudged me, and I was startled to find that he'd risen from the sofa and was standing against the porch rail next to me.

"What're you doin' up so late?" he asked. Shoot. Share a couple dreams with a guy, and now I've got myself another naggy older brother.

"Soda got shot," I said. "He's in the hospital."

"What?" Tim's voice was no longer thick with sleep. His eyes were sharp and questioning.

I nodded. "Out at the Winslow place. Doctor says he's gonna be okay, but-"

Tim barreled down the porch steps, his car keys already jingling in his hand. He'd heard enough. Soda being shot was probably the most impossible thing he could imagine. I reckon he'd decided he had to see it for himself.

"You coming?" he asked, already ducking into his old Chevy. I nodded and got in beside him.


	7. Chapter 7

_**Std Disclaimer: I don't own anything even remotely relating to the Outsiders, but this is my own work. Blah, blah, blah.**_

* * *

Tim let me out at the doors to emergency. He said he'd park the car and be right in.

Darry was still in the same corridor, only asleep. I guess even the faint sound of the double doors closing behind me was enough to wake him up, because he sat up straighter all of a sudden and blinked at me.

"Pony, what are you doing here? What time is it?" He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and squinted at the clock on the wall behind me.

"Can't sleep," I shrugged, looking down at the tile floor just as Tim came slamming through the doors.

"Darry, Pony just told me about Soda. Is he okay?"

The tight look of concern on Tim's face changed quickly. In a flash, Darry was out of that hard chair, pinning Tim to the wall. "You sonofabitch!" Darry snarled, bunching up Tim's shirt in his fist. "How dare you come in here like you don't know what happened?"

"What the hell are you talking about?" Tim shoved him a little, just enough to get himself up off the wall.

"You were helping that escaped con," Darry concluded with a furious nod. "What I want to know is how you got _my _brother mixed up in it!"

"Darry," Tim held up his hands, his jaw clenching, "you're crazy. I got out of the plant at eight, had a couple beers over at Buck's, and-"

"_Bullshit_. When news broke about those cons escaping, you all but stood up and cheered," Darry's voice was flat. He was shaking. I got the feeling that he desperately wanted to put Tim through that wall, and I knew I had to speak up. But when I opened my mouth, nothing would come. "Don't come in here playing dumb, Shepard," Darry warned. "Stay the hell away from me and my brothers."

Tim shook his head. "Alright. I'm going." Halfway back to the double doors, he turned back and looked at me. "Ponyboy, when your brother wakes up from this dream he's having, you let me know." And then he slammed out of the ER.

I just stood there, feeling sick and woozy with shame. It took a couple of tries, but I found my voice, though it wobbled mightily. "D-Darry, Tim didn't get Soda shot." He looked at me, but I looked away, too ashamed to meet his eyes. My voice got even smaller, so that he leaned forward to hear me when I tried to continue. "I-I did. I'm the one that was helping that con. I-I'm the one that got Soda shot."

Glory. You coulda heard a single strand of hair hit the floor in the silence that followed. And in the waiting, my insides twisted and clenched. I went hot and then ice cold. I shook with fear, ready for Darry to rise and put _me _through the wall. But he didn't move. And when he finally, finally spoke, he didn't so much as look my way.

"Go home," he said softly. But it wasn't a tender kind of soft. It was like the way you and three other guys tied down a foul-tempered, unbroken Bronc in the riding ring. When I didn't move, his voice shook from the effort it took to keep his tone low. "Get. Out. Of. My. Sight."

I couldn't breathe, and I couldn't see. I just stumbled out of the ER and broke into a run. Tires squealed as someone squashed their brakes to the floorboard to keep from hitting me, but I didn't look back. I just ran.

* * *

Soda was in the hospital for three days. Darry didn't say one word to me for any of them. Not a single word. I was too ashamed to say something first. Too scared what he'd say back, I guess. I tried to stay out of his way and hoped he'd forgive me some day.

And I couldn't go to Soda. I couldn't walk into that room. I sobbed just thinking about it. Was he mad at me? He had to be. If I were laid up like that, with all that time to think, I'd sure be mad. Funny thing is how afterward, what you should have done all along is always perfectly clear. And it was perfectly clear I should have left Rossey to fend for himself. There would have been no trip out to that barn and no slug in the shoulder for Soda. I couldn't go in that hospital, let alone Soda's room. The weight of Darry's disappointment in me…my body went hollow.

So I paced around our house, cleaning things that were already clean until Two-Bit looked around one afternoon and asked if we'd won the lottery and hired a maid. There weren't any dishes to do, because I could barely choke anything down. When I did, it was just something quick like a banana or a peanut butter sandwich. Nothing to clean up after.

I tried to do my homework, but since I'd spent all day in school thinking about Darry and Soda, I didn't remember the lessons, and words weren't making sense. I'd sit with a book for an hour and never leave the same page.

There were a couple times when Darry would look at me and open his mouth. He must have seen the hope on my face, though. I think it made him go hard again. It made him remember I had a reason not to expect any mercy. And maybe he got a little self-righteous and remembered just how awfully bad I'd screwed up, and maybe he decided each time that I still needed to be punished for a while longer. If only he knew the torture those moments brought, he'd realize the first time was enough. But as much as I wanted to say something, say anything to get him to answer, even if it was just a yes or no and not about the elephant in the room, I couldn't say a damn word. I'd pretty much gone mute altogether. I'm not sure if my voice would even work anymore.

Finally, one night after work when Darry came in he had Soda with him. I watched my brother stagger in the door with his arm in a sling, drugged up on painkillers. An anvil weight descended on my chest. I flashed a picture of the coyote at the bottom of a cliff while the ACME weight toppled over and flattened him. That was me.

It was then that Darry finally spoke to me, for the first time in three days. "You come straight home from school tomorrow. Social worker's coming."

I started to reply, but he whipped around and went into the kitchen, and Soda headed for our room. I followed Soda.

I sat on my bed and watched Soda kick off his shoes and the fresh jeans Darry had brought him. He struggled into some pajama bottoms one-handed, and shrugged out of the flannel shirt he'd merely had draped over his shoulders. Then he eased into his bed, wincing a little. Seeing Soda that way, so tired… I got a lump in my throat the size of Texas.

"Man," he slurred softly. "I've never seen him so mad." I nodded and sat on Soda's bed, but I didn't say anything. I guess he knew how bad I felt, because he added, "Pony, he's going to come around. He just needs time is all."

This time I didn't nod, because I didn't think Darry was ever going to forgive me. This wasn't like any other time he'd been mad at me. Those times, he talked to me. More than I wanted, most times. He looked at me. Grabbed me by my collar, desperate to get some sense through. But now it's like he's given up. I'm not worth the trouble anymore. And that feels bad. It's a little cold and a lot lonely.

"How come you didn't come see me?" he mumbled, his eyes drooping shut. He forced them open again, though, fighting it, and I nearly started bawling at the raw pain in his face. He looked like a puzzled dog at the shelter, cocking its head, wondering why nobody wanted to take him home.

I shook my head. I couldn't get words out. My voice got thick, and about a gallon of saltwater trembled at the edges of my eye lids, but I clamped down hard on them. And because it was all I could do, I just shook my head again and shrugged. But I grabbed his left hand and I squeezed it, shuddering. A million little arrows stabbed at my heart when he squeezed back. Same old Soda. It was enough for him. He forgave me already, if he was ever mad in the first place.

"Why'd you…help…him…" Soda trailed off. He was asleep before I could worry about trying to answer. He was still clutching my hand.

* * *

It got so life felt like a dream. I hadn't slept a wink since Soda got shot, and it made the world seem weird to me. Tilted and crazy. No sense anywhere. Like Soda still in bed, snoring softly as I dressed for school. He's usually the one that wakes me up, typically by ambush. It didn't feel like a real morning without his body crashing down on me, sending my heart to my throat. I'll say one thing for it…it sure got a guy's blood moving.

The whole house was quiet. I discovered why quick enough. Darry was already gone. That, too, made things surreal. You could count on a few things like clockwork: Soda, the leaping alarm clock, and Darry with his stocking feet up on the kitchen table, with a mug of coffee at his right hand and the sports page clamped in his left. He used to play baseball in school, and if he didn't know what the Sooners were up to, it was a rare day.

He'd left a note. _Soda…can of soup on stove. Pony-Straight home from school._

Even his quick scrawl looked angry when it came to me.

I grabbed a banana and my books, wishing I could be flopped on my bed across from Soda. Not that it mattered if all I was gonna do is stare at the ceiling for the rest of my nights. Walking felt more like slogging through quicksand, and it was half a mile to school, easy.

Nodding off in class was surprisingly easy, seeing as how I couldn't do it at night. In third period, Mr. Archer smacked my desk so hard with his ruler that it broke in two. Everybody laughed about the banana-shaped red mark on my cheek. I'd been considering it all morning, but my stomach flip-flopped every time I nearly peeled it.

I half-heartedly looked for Two-Bit at lunch, but he was nowhere to be found, and I didn't particularly want company, anyway. He'd been spending most of his free time with Soda and Darry at the hospital. I wondered if Darry'd told him anything, but I doubted it. Two-Bit's mouth is ten sizes too big, and he'd have been sure to look me up to blabber at me if he knew the whole story.

I couldn't tell you a thing taught in school that day, but when the seventh period bell rang, I started running full tilt for home. Maybe I could start showing Darry I wasn't a complete mush brain, after all. But I ran out of breath barely a block from school, and my eyes clouded up the way eyes do when you come into the dark from someplace real bright. Might've had something to do with all those half-eaten sandwiches and slept on bananas. I'm real bad about not eating when something's bugging me, and since this was the biggest bug ever, I was liable to starve to death by week's end.

I wasn't eager to give Darry any reason to be any more mad than he already was, so I really tried to hustle home. Since I couldn't run or even jog, I walked as fast as I could and not run out of breath again. But when I got to the corner of our block, I could already see the social worker's car bumped up behind Darry's truck. And, glory, but there was no mistaking it, even from four doors down. Darry was loading Mom & Dad's old blue suitcases into her wide open trunk.

_Look what you've done! _My mind screamed. _You've ruined everything!_ The last thing I wanted to do at that point was reach the front gate, but my feet kept plodding closer. The waking nightmare that had been forming in my head for days was coming true, sure enough. They were sending me and Soda to a boy's home!

They hadn't seen me yet, but I could see them. Darry was nodding curtly to the social worker. "You're right," I heard him say, "It's the best thing for him. For us."

I nearly pissed myself. Him. _Him. _Not them. Just him. Me. Just me.

Even when you know something awful's really happening, you don't want it to be true. Soda was leaning on a porch post. He was hunched over funny, like it hurt to stand up straight. His eyes were wide and wet, and he wiped at them with the unbuttoned cuff of his left sleeve. Wind began to rush through my head, rising to a deafening roar. He said something to Darry that I didn't quite catch. He was probably begging Darry not to send me away.

"It'll be tough for a while," Darry said, "but we have to do it. It's time, Soda."

I had just reached the front gate. My books fell from my hands and hit the concrete with a loud smack. Darry's head whipped around. His eyes were flat, emotionless. Everything stopped for just that one small second, life itself balanced on one toe so you could only watch it totter crazily, knowing it was going to crash down all around you with nothing to stop it.

I ran. Just ran and ran, straight through the clouding eyes and the breathlessness. I didn't know where I was going, what I was doing. I just ran. There was nothing else left.


	8. Chapter 8

_**Std Disclaimer: I don't own anything even remotely relating to the Outsiders, but this is my own work. Blah, blah, blah.**_

* * *

I had no conscious notion where I was going, but when I pulled open the heavy door of the old Winslow barn, something flashed through my head. I didn't know it then, but Simpson had picked up Rossey that morning. He got caught trying to hop a train in Lawton. Which was a shame, because I think in my crazy, crushed heart, I was hoping I'd surprise him and he'd shoot me, too.

It still didn't seem real. _I _didn't seem real. But when I saw the smears of blood at my feet just inside the doors, I knew that it was. My brother's blood. I bent to touch it, but of course, it was dry. I fell back against the door then, too numb to cry. But I was shaking all over, so hard my teeth clattered and bumped.

No matter how much Darry yells at me, no matter how mad he got, I guess I never really thought he'd want me gone. But maybe it was something that just built up in him to boiling, and the thing with Rossey sent him over. Soda was too weak to really fight for me, which must have made it the right time. _It's time, _I remembered Darry saying. It's time.

* * *

The first week of May passed in a blur. After all that not being able to sleep, I'd spun around full circle. I couldn't do anything _but _sleep. I'd made a nice little bed of dusty old feed sacks and even older hay in one of the old stalls, and I only got up a couple times a day to wobble down to the far corner of the property, where there were peaches just barely ripe enough to eat. And even then, a couple bites in, they tasted like baloney and I couldn't eat them anymore.

I considered the way things were almost from outside myself, like it was happening to someone else and I was only watching. I imagined the state watching our place suspiciously to see if I'd come back home. I imagined Soda out searching the countryside for me, Peggy the farthest thing from his mind. And I pictured Darry at home, reading about the Sooners.

Soda would wonder if I'd gone back to Windrixville. Him and Steve would probably wind up out there. Soda would politely ask someone at the gas station where the old church used to be. He'd probably spend some time just looking at the ashes. But not much. Soda can't rest on anything for long. Once he satisfied himself that I wasn't anyplace nearby, he'd start checking houses. Curly's. Two-Bit's. But I wasn't anywhere. Not anywhere he'd looked.

I wondered offhandedly if he'd think of the barn. And that made me wonder if I should find someplace else. But I didn't know where else to go, really. And I couldn't muster up enough strength to care. Whenever I started really thinking hard about what I should do next, I wound up falling back to sleep.

It rained almost every day. Early May is usually ripe for storms, and this one was no exception. I'd wake up and listen to it raging and booming, the barn creaking madly like it was about to fall down around me. But I kept falling asleep. I couldn't stay awake. Didn't care to, anyway.

But finally I woke and I couldn't sleep again. My head hurt something fierce, the way it does if you oversleep or if you read a long book in one sitting. The barn was making all sorts of noises, too. Groans and creaks and loud cracks. I knew I had to eat something. Baloney sure didn't appeal, but my stomach…the gnawing emptiness was so fierce I couldn't think about much else.

Outside, though, the world was darkening. I wasn't sure what time of day it was or even what day it was. Saturday? Tuesday? That's the trouble with sleeping too much. You lose count of the dark times and light times, and if you lose track of them, you lose everything.

I let the wind whip at me, ignoring the little bits of grass and small, dried out twigs it slung. Like angry dogs, it growled past me on both sides. Thunder rolled in long waves overhead. As I came up on the peach trees, it boomed so loud the ground shook. When I squinted up at the sky, it was a sickly, clotted smudge of grayish-green. _Tornado,_ I thought, as nonchalantly as if I was telling someone it was half past three.

A sheet of rain dropped from the sky like a stagehand losing control of the curtain. Guess I didn't really want those peaches, anyway. Turning back, the wind gusted so fiercely that I might've been able to lie down in it and not fall. I waited to feel the alarm, the rush of panic, the…anything. But there was nothing, and I just leaned into it and kept putting one foot in front of the other.

The little bits of grass and tiny, dried out twigs graduated up to small branches torn too soon from old trees. Little young ones with fresh green leaves, ripped away from all they knew. _Guess the green ain't gold no more, _I thought faintly as the wind moaned. I caught a fallen fence post with my toe and hit the ground face first. My body went rigid as the roar increased to that of a freight train. It wasn't for Windrixville, either.

I guess I wasn't completely numb, after all, because right about when I caught sight of an entire tree being yanked up from the ground, I started to run for the barn in earnest. There wasn't any fuel in me, though, and my whole body ached from the effort.

The east door slammed behind me, literally shoving me inside. Meanwhile, it ripped the north door halfway off its hinges and sent it banging. Part of the already patchy roof ripped away and sent a beam crashing down right behind me, so that I tripped forward into a post. I did what every Oklahoman learns in school drills: I dropped to my knees and held on to that post for dear life as more of the roof tore away and the updraft tugged hard on me.

I must've been a little out of my mind by then, because I thought I heard my name in the moaning of the wind.

"Pony!" I closed my eyes and held on tighter as the wind got even worse. But then it came again, and it was so real, I couldn't help but lift my head in the darkness. "Pony!"

I rose, feverishly, searching wildly. It sounded for all the world like Darry, and if he was talking to me, finally talking to me, I didn't want to miss my chance. I turned toward the south side of the barn, where it seemed to be coming from. That's when the north door burst free and came at me like a runaway train.


	9. Chapter 9

**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)**

**If you are still with me now that I've definitely left the beaten track (and then some, obviously!)...THANKS!**

* * *

"Don't move him, Soda," Darry said from someplace far away. His voice sounded…odd. I wasn't sure if that was because of him or because of me. It was like being in deep water, where sound and color get all muted out and you struggle and pull toward that little bit of light hanging just over your head. I was trying and trying, but I couldn't quite break the surface. But his voice filtered through again. "…we don't know how bad he's hurt."

"I think he's coming around," Soda said, his voice more grave and flat than I'd ever heard. "Ponnnny…" He said my name loudly, slowly. The drawl was so loud that it crashed through my head, battering the inside of my skull. A screaming sort of pain ricocheted through me. "_Pony,_" he repeated, and it bounced after the first one.

"Quit yelling," I croaked, ending on a groan, finally trying my eyes. Things looked fuzzy, like everything had gone peach. Darry bent over me, and I closed my eyes again. I was too afraid to look back at his.

"Pony?" There it was again, that funny note in his voice. I opened my eyes again, as if I could see it floating out of him. "Can you move?"

He looked…tight. Tense. Edgy. And he watched me steadily. Carefully.

"Gimme a minute," I gasped as I tried moving a leg. I was flat on my back in this strange, fuzzy world where everything sent little sizzles of pain rippling through me. Everything hurt…so much so that I couldn't find any one thing to complain about.

Darry and Soda knelt beside me, one on either side. Darry looked…funny. Sorta like Soda did the time I accidentally slammed his hand in the door of the truck. Shocked, and sort of sick. Darry reached out and laid his palm on my forehead and, I don't know, I just lost it. I started bawling. It hurt. It made little rivers of pain pour from my head into my neck and my back.

And then, after all this time, there it was again. The tightness in Darry's face, the fierce control he'd been exerting…it failed, and his face crumpled. Just like that night. That same desperate, lonely scared kidlook came over him, and before I could consider how bad it would hurt, I rolled up and launched myself into his chest. If it surprised him, he didn't let on. He just eased his arms around me and held on gently, like he was scared I would break. Frankly, I wasn't sure I wouldn't.

"Glory," Soda breathed fearfully, "He's bleeding bad, Darry! Whole back of his shirt's red!" I could feel Darry crane his neck to try to get a look. I could feel my shirt clinging stickily to me. My back felt on fire, stinging and hot. I tried to turn my head to get a look, but my neck wouldn't turn too far, so I gave up.

"Pony," Darry choked, shaking from the effort it took to try to keep himself together, "Jesus, Pony, why'd you run off like that?"

I was baffled. He couldn't not know. How could he wonder, after what he knew I'd seen and heard? My voice came out muffled because I was still pressed into his shirt.

"You p-put the suitcases in her car!" I stuttered in big, sobbing gasps. "You said it was for the b-best!"

That was when he gently pushed me back away from him and looked straight into my eyes. Now he _really _looked ill. "Christ," he sighed helplessly, his jaw clenching as his eyes went glassy. "Pony..." he tried, his mouth opened and closed again. I just shook harder. And then he sighed. One big, long rolling sigh of regret. And…shame, which I'd never heard in his voice before.

He pulled me back up against him, and I was surprised to feel him shaking a little, too. When his voice came again, it was so soft I had to listen hard to hear his words. "Figured I was done with you, huh?" He cupped the back of my head and rubbed gently, with more affection than he'd shown me in a long time.

I couldn't see him, but I got the odd feeling that he couldn't speak, so Soda explained it for him. He crawled in next to Darry and dropped his hand to my neck. I tried not to wince. "Pony, the social worker asked Darry if you were still having nightmares. We said you were, and she told us that she thought you weren't getting past losing Mom and Dad because there's reminders all over the house. Said we had to start thinking about getting rid of their things…"

That had been a point of contention between Darry and the social worker. Just about every visit, when she checks out the house, she always mentions the closet. Darry had taken over Mom & Dad's bedroom, but he still kept his clothes in the closet in his old room, and theirs still hung where they'd always hung. Sometimes, when no one was home, I'd go and open the doors and stand in front of it, touching the blouses and slacks that hung there. Sometimes I'd pull down one of Mom's soft sweaters and just breathe it in, like I'd done with Soda's pillow the other day. Lavender and flour. And Dad's pipe tobacco.

Soda's voice brought me back from home, where I was standing in front of that closet again, trying to picture it empty. Because that's what he was saying. "Darry figured he'd probably ought to do anything they asked us to do, seeing as how we're not looking so good right now."

Darry's forehead met mine for a minute, and then he eased me back again. This time, when his eyes met mine, it wasn't so hard to look back. There wasn't anything hard in them just now. If anything, he looked…sorry.

"Pony, I didn't mean to shut you out like that," he said, his voice trembling. But you know Darry. The worst thing in the world to him is losing control, so he reined it in tightly again. "After I sent you home with Two-Bit, the social worker showed up. Simpson," he explained. It was all he needed to say. Chairman of the breakup committee. Probably couldn't get on the phone fast enough. "He suggested to her that she take you and Soda right then. But she just told me there'd be a hearing. I was already half outta my head with Soda and with that, but when you said you were helping Rossey…" He trailed off. He didn't need to tell me it had been the last straw on his overburdened back. It's easy to forget he's only twenty-one years old…until a time like this.

"We had to go to court without you," Darry said quietly, still content to just rub the back of my head.

"And?" I asked, afraid to hear the answer.

He shook his head. "I don't know. I told the judge that you saw me loading the suitcases into her car and probably jumped to the wrong conclusion, but I wasn't sure of anything except we couldn't find you. He said he figured if you _did_ run off because you thought they were putting you in a foster home, you couldn't be all that unhappy living with us. But everything's just on hold right now. Now that we found you, we'll have to go back in to see him."

I didn't like that, and I shook again. "I thought, I mean I figured…" I couldn't find the right words. "I thought you didn't want me," I finished lamely. It sounded stupid now, seeing the state Darry was in.

Darry let out a big sigh and his face twisted up for a minute again. "Pony," he pleaded, "No."

Soda, who'd just been listening to us getting things straight, tried to lighten the mood.

"Hey, y'all," he said shakily, "if you're done makin' up, we should probably get out of here. Never know if another twister's gonna touch down."

Darry nodded and stood up, reaching a hand down for me. But when I tried to lift my arm up, pain rampaged all through me. I made a face.

"Soda, let's you and I each take him under an arm," he said. Together, they eased me to my feet and held me there as gently as they could, but I heard a pop and a pain so white and terrible stole my breath. It whooshed out of me and I dropped.

* * *


	10. Chapter 10

**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)**

**

* * *

**

I woke up in Darry's lap, Soda hunched behind the wheel, peering into the stormy darkness. I hurt everywhere but tried not to groan as the truck squeaked and bumped over the badly pitted back roads. Even though he drove only as fast as he dared (which wasn't too fast, given that the storm had kicked up again) it was still too jarring for me. Darry's voice was as calm as he could manage. He kept saying stuff like,

"Easy, Pony. You're gonna be okay..." and "We're almost there…"

I just turned my face into his shoulder. I was awful tired, even after all the sleeping I had done. And then the truck slammed hard into a pothole and the world fell away again.

I kept fading in and out. Felt sort of like being on a carousel, dizzily watching for that one reference point…like the person waving at you from the sidelines, and everything else just a quick, crazy blur. Images, flashes of things came and went. Bright, fuzzy light. A doctor in a wrinkled white coat bending over me with one of those pen lights like on TV. A woman's voice…

"-blood sugar's dangerously low…"

There was input from Darry and Soda, too, though it seemed to come from a mile away.

"It's probably been a week since he's eaten anything…"

"…just sort of gasped and passed out," Soda was saying to someone. "Back of his shirt's all bloody, too."

And then Darry with that tightness to his voice again. "…took a barn door across his back in the tornado….sent him into a post face first…a couple times, and then landed on his back."

The gurney was moving. A count of three, and then they set me down on a hard surface. A buzzing. I opened my eyes. I guess I looked bewildered, because a woman with a kind face said,

"It's okay, sugar, we're just taking some X-rays."

I closed my eyes again. I was so tired. I drowsed, half unaware of the world while still registering some of the conversation around me.

"How long was he unconscious initially?"

"I'm not sure," Soda said. "Felt like forever."

Darry chimed in. "Maybe twenty minutes," he said. But he sounded unsure.

"That popping you heard was most likely a spontaneous correction of the separated shoulder…_muscle spasms…concussion…shock…suture the gash on his back…bruising and swelling…_"

I tried to follow everything the doctor was telling them, but, glory, it seemed like the laundry list was never going to end. If I'd been a car, he'd have told them to just get me to a wrecking yard.

When I next became aware of anything again, there was an IV needle taped to the back of my hand, and the doctor was back, giving instructions. "He'll need one of these about every six hours. You'll need to take him to your family doctor in about ten days to get those sutures pulled out of his back."

"When can he come home?" Darry asked, his voice gruff.

"As soon as he can hold a coherent conversation," the doctor replied. "Being a little foggy from the pain medication is one thing, but until he stops losing and regaining consciousness, he's not going anywhere."

I listened to this with my eyes closed. I wanted to open them, because it meant going home. I didn't like hospitals much, not after Johnny. And especially not after Soda. But they might as well have been stitched shut, too.

It was all a big blur. I don't even remember leaving the hospital, but Darry told me later that they wouldn't release me until I stayed awake and made some sense. Funny thing is, he says I had a nice long talk with our social worker, who stopped by at Simpson's request. Just another attempt by Mr. Chairman to sponsor a juvenile delinquent into a "healthier environment". According to Darry, I told her all about helping Rossey, thinking Darry hated me and that he'd turned me over to the state on his own. I told her I went to the barn hoping Rossey was there, because if my brother didn't want me anymore, I'd just as soon he shoot me, too. Darry almost couldn't get that part out. It choked him up some. But like I said, I found that all out later. Because, of course, it made things worse. Made Darry look like some kind of hard case, when it really should have just made me look like a stupid young kid who didn't understand the sort of worries put upon a guy who had to step up into a father's shoes with no more notice than it took for a quick union of opposing metal on a storm-slicked road.

No, I didn't remember actually leaving the hospital, but suddenly I was back in the truck, like I'd been dreaming the X-rays and the IV, my head tipped over on Darry's shoulder, staring at the blotchy, rain-spotted windshield. I didn't hurt anywhere anymore. Everything took a lot of effort, though, and I felt sorta…detached from everything.

"Darry?"

"Hmm?" He was sleepy next to me. Guess Soda was driving again.

"Are they gonna split us up?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"I won't let them," he told me, though I figured even he knew he had no real control over that. But he needed to believe it just as much as I did right then, I guess.

When we got home, my muscles weren't working at all. I might've been afraid if it wasn't for that floaty, devil-may-careness that held me. Darry hauled me out of the truck as if I weighed no more than a sack of potatoes.

"Jesus," Darry swore softly, "if he loses any more weight, we'll have to tie a rope around his ankle."

"Man," Soda yawned, "he looks bad."

"He'll be okay. You heard what the doctor said."

The screen door squeaked, and Darry hitched sideways to keep from knocking my head on the frame. That's when someone shouted,

"Glory! What happened to Pony?!"

"He's okay, Two-Bit," Darry repeated wearily, just like he'd said to Soda.

"He looks stoned!"

"He pretty much is," Soda agreed soberly. "Doc's got him on enough muscle relaxers to put a horse down."

Two-Bit's voice followed us through the house. "Where's his clothes?"

That's when I realized I was wearing a hospital gown and there was a band around my wrist.

"Doctor cut 'em off. His shirt was torn up, anyway."

And then I went back to only hearing pieces of things as Darry eased me down onto my bed.

"…needs most is food and rest…"

"…barn. Cherry saw…thought she was crazy, but we'd looked everyplace else…"

"…talk about this in the morning?"

And then the light went out, and I went with it.


	11. Chapter 11

_**Std Disclaimer: I don't own anything even remotely relating to the Outsiders, but this is my own work. Blah, blah, blah.**_

* * *

The next morning, if possible, I felt worse. It was quiet, and it was freezing. I wondered if Darry had left the windows open all night. He loves the fresh air, even in the dead of winter. So he enjoys it while me and Soda freeze.

I had to pee.

I sat up gently, my back, neck and head hurting like crazy. Darry had moved the armchair into our room again. Last time he did that, Johnny and Dallas had just died and I'd been kicked in the head by a soc at the rumble. That was only couple days more than a year ago, just after I'd turned 14.

Darry slept deeply. I could tell by the twitching of his eyelids that he was dreaming. I sat on the edge of my bed, waiting for the worst of the pain to pass and wondered what he was dreaming about. Soda was flopped facedown on his own bed, fully clothed except for his shoes.

I got up and started easing toward the door. Every careful step sent fiery licks of pain from my neck to my back. I went from icy cold to roaring hot and back again in a bizarre spin. I was dizzy, hungry, and shaky…and not at all sure I was going to make it to the john before my jellied legs gave out. The thought of lying in my own piss in the hallway until one of my brothers got up kept me going.

I looked terrible. I caught sight of myself in the cracked bathroom mirror and almost wondered just who it was looking back at me. Dad called it spook-faced: pale, with shadowy eyes, bruises and cuts.

I tried to look at my back, which hurt so bad I couldn't even take a deep breath. But I couldn't turn my neck far enough and ended up turning in small circles like a dog chasing its tail. After I relieved myself, I tried it again.

Darry appeared in the doorway, yawning. He's never one for a lot of conversation in the morning, but he said, "Forty-six stitches in the worst part of that gash, and you're pretty much one big bruise. Especially right here," he said, tapping the knob at the back of his neck. I would have nodded, but I couldn't move my head around too much. Instead, I just stood there shivering.

"Hungry?"

"Yeah," I said.

"Good. I'll make you breakfast. Go back to bed. Doctor wants you to stay there for a few days."

He followed me back to the bedroom and watched me stagger back to bed. I winced, sucking in a breath. I couldn't really lay flat on my back, so I stayed sorta on my side.

"I'll bring you a pill, too," he said, still watching me carefully. I tried not to make any faces.

Hunger warred with exhaustion. I wanted to sleep, but if I did, I'd miss my first real meal in a week. So instead, I lay there thinking about things. I was glad I was wrong about the suitcases, but I was sure scared about that hearing. I'd messed up real good this time, and I wasn't so sure there'd be any more patience left for us.

Two-Bit must've crashed on the couch last night, because I heard Darry ask if he was going to stick around for breakfast.

"Sure," was his cheerful response. "Pony up?"

"Yeah. Hope so, anyway," Darry answered on another yawn. "He was half-asleep in the bathroom when I got up."

"Maybe I should go entertain him, keep him awake."

"No rough stuff," Darry warned.

"Shoot, I may be dumb, but I ain't stupid," he retorted. "We'll save the circus for next week."

"You'd better!" Darry called down the hall after him.

Two-Bit peered around the door jamb carefully. He just stared at me for a second with an odd look on his face. The moment passed, though, and he sauntered over to my bed, cracking a grin. He eased down next to me instead of bouncing, though.

"Least this time you didn't come back scalped," he quipped.

"Hey," I greeted, my voice still rusty from lack of use. "What's goin' on, Two-Bit?"

"Same old, same old," he replied brightly. "Tim and Cherry are still circling around each other. Steve's still trying to get Buck to bring in a band at the Ace on Saturday nights." He shrugged, and I saw him look over at Soda. "They didn't either one of them sleep a decent wink while you were gone. Had me running all over every place they thought you might be. Hell, even Tim asked around."

I didn't know what to say to that.

"I dunno," Two-Bit said, "Guess if I were you, I'd have run scared, too." He shifted around to face me better. "Those guys from the railroad showed up at the DX a couple days ago, said you hadn't been at work. Asked if you were okay. Soda whipped around and went in back. Buck told them you were missing and to call the DX right away if anyone spotted you. Soda bawled like a baby, almost right in front of everyone." Two-Bit was more serious than I'd just about ever seen him in my life. The only other person he'd ever sobered up for was Johnny. But he frowned now, and he picked at the yarn ties on the old patchwork quilt my mom had made. He swallowed hard, and he didn't look at me. "Thing is, Ponyboy, you gotta stop running off every time you get your dander up. You had us all half-crazy."

I sighed. "I know it. And Darry's never gonna make rent next month, what with the hospital bills that'll start coming in."

Two-Bit, never able to be serious for long if at all, smirked. "You tell anybody I told you this, I'll beat the tar out of you." He glanced over at Sodapop, and then over at the door. "Took a job with my old man," he said.

That was big news. Two-Bit had found out not too long ago that his father, who'd run off and left his mother to raise him and his kid sister on little more than love, was living in Tulsa again and had a whole new family. Two-Bit had gone down to his printing shop. They'd tried to reconcile, but it was real tough for a guy to forgive the sort of hard times Two-Bit had been through, especially knowing that his old man's face shone with pride at the mention of his step son, while there was nothing left for his own son. I think Two-Bit's spent his life hamming things up to keep anyone from seeing how confused he was. How lonely he was.

"Really?" I asked sleepily.

"Really. I marched in and told him I needed money. He wouldn't give me any unless I worked for it." Two-Bit made a face. "Never made that stupid Jack get his hands dirty, but-" Two-Bit shrugged. "I put all those little letters in the trays so they get stamped on newsprint. The _Buffalo Nickel_," he added. That was a little weekly circular where folks put up their stuff for sale in hopes other people would buy it.

"No kidding?" I couldn't picture Two-Bit working, after all the pains he took to avoid it.

"Yeah, I'm kidding," he chuckled. "I can't spell or write like you. Wouldn't nobody be able to read it if they put me in charge of all that. I'm a machinist. I fix the presses when they jam up."

"Good money?" I asked.

"Forty a week," he agreed. "I gave Darry half of it yesterday. Told him I'd been practically living here lately, so I might as well be paying rent. But that ain't the most amazing thing, anyway."

"What is?" I yawned, frowning as the pain sizzled in my head and neck.

"Tim Shepard came by yesterday and gave Darry a hundred bucks he was saving to overhaul his Chevy. Said y'all needed it more than he needed wheels, and if Darry'd give him a ride to the plant in the mornings, he could have it for nothing. No paybacks."

I _really _didn't know what to make of that. I didn't know what was stranger…Tim offering charity, or Darry accepting it. And it scared me. It scared me a lot. Things must really be bad. Worse that I'd even been imagining, and my imagination was really good. "Bet Darry didn't want to take it," I hoped.

"Sure didn't," Two-Bit agreed cheerfully. "Tim said Darry'd have to put it in his cold, dead hand before he'd take it back, though. But that ain't all, neither," Two-Bit looked about hysterical with it. "Buck hears this little talk between Tim and Darry, seeing as how they were in the Ace at the time, waiting for Soda and Steve to come in from looking for you. When Soda comes in, Buck drags him in the back room and tells him he can have any parts necessary to fix Tim's car, just this one time, so long as he did the labor for free on his own time. Top it all off, Steve gets wind of _that_ and tells Buck he'll work the bar every Saturday night for the next month so Buck can take his new lady friend, Cheryl, out on the town."

My mouth was hanging open by this time. Two-Bit saw that and nodded. "You and Soda've turned this place into a regular Jerry Lewis Telethon, Pony."

Just then, Darry came in with a tray, so Two-Bit clamped his mouth shut tight and didn't say anything else.

"Eat the eggs first," Darry told me, knowing I was liable to crunch down the buttery toast before the eggs. Guess he wanted me to have the protein.

He needn't have worried. It was the best thing I think I'd ever tasted. Darry brought two more plates in, one for Two-Bit and one for himself, and we just munched quietly together. Soda must've been dead to the world because not even the smell of food woke him up.

I made short work of the eggs, plowed through the toast, two pieces of bacon, and swallowed half the milk before washing down the pain pill Darry had brought with the rest of it. I managed half of the apple before the pill kicked in hard and I fell back into that place where only bits and pieces drifted in and out.

"Glory, them things work fast!"

"…okay, Two-Bit. Better than watching him make faces all…"

"...look like that last night?"

"You were too tired to remember."

"…supposed to sleep with his eyes open like that? It's creepy…"

"…only a little open. Don't look if it spooks you."

I drowsily registered Soda's voice.

"…what're you gonna do, Darry? We can't keep missing work…"

"I can miss today…boss said he'd heard about it…been there, himself, with his kid…and then he said….see me next week."

"No shit? A whole week off? With pay?"

"…any left for me?"

"…you were dead to the world. If you wanna go to the store, I can…"

I think they left the room because I stopped hearing anything.

--

Long story short, I had them real worried for a while. I'd come around to feel a random hand on my forehead and any number of our buddies asking something like,

"You sure the doctor said to wait and see? He's awful hot…"

Sometimes a guy or two would camp out in my room with Darry or Soda, and I'd hear the sounds of a blackjack or poker game going on. It was just a long string of wakefulness and sleep, punctuated by big meals and wobbily trips to the bathroom where I'd try to make sense of my face in the mirror until one day, around dusk, I shrugged out of the gown and my shorts, which I figured probably smelled pretty ripe, and carefully stepped into the shower. Of course, that sent the cavalry almost immediately.

"That you, Pony?" Soda called from behind the door.

"Who else?" I croaked. "Can you get me some clean clothes?"

"Sure thing." The relief in his voice reached me through the closed door. "Hungry?"

"Starved," I agreed.


	12. Chapter 12

_**Std Disclaimer: I don't own anything even remotely relating to the Outsiders, but this is my own work. Blah, blah, blah.**_

* * *

It was hard to shampoo because lifting my arms pulled at the stitches. Finally, I figured out that if I turned my front into the spray, it hurt a lot less to dip my head forward than to tip it back. I just let the water run, hardly scrubbing, just letting the water do most of the work. Darry didn't even yell at me like he usually does when I'm in the bathroom too long.

After I got out of the shower, it took a little doing to get a towel around my waist, but I did it. I was brushing my teeth—I can't begin to describe how bad my mouth tasted—when I caught Soda, wide-eyed and slack mouthed, staring at my back.

"Bad huh?" I asked, slowly returning my toothbrush to the cup on the back of the sink. He just nodded.

"Think you can sit out on the couch so Darry can clean your sheets?"

I thought I could. Soda left me alone to dress, but it took me so long he popped his head in again just as I got the boxers on. The t-shirt was harder, but I managed it clumsily. Soda looked like he had to hold himself back from helping.

"Dinner's ready," he said, ducking back out again.

The world looked different somehow. And I'm not talking about the filmy blueness that exists each evening between day and night. Things looked the same…but maybe I was different. Everything looked good. And it felt good to sit down on the sofa, once the leaning back against the cushions part was out of the way, anyway.

The smell of fried chicken preceded Darry's arrival with a plate and glass for me. He hardly ever fixes fried chicken because he says it is too much work. But I figured he was probably getting bored hanging around the house all day, waiting for me to get better.

Darry, Soda, and I ate around the coffee table, which Darry doesn't often allow. Mom and Dad were pretty strict on having food anyplace in the house except in the kitchen, and I guess it never occurred to any of us to stray away from that.

Two-Bit laughed and told us about some guys from Charlie's Transmission that he'd snookered at pool. Soda teased back that they must've been awful because Two-Bit's really better at cards. You wouldn't think so, because Soda and Steve whip him regularly and soundly, but when Two-Bit plays anyone he doesn't know, he always wins. He says only the gang can see through his tells, and that seems to be about right, judging by how often he has a few extra bucks in his pocket.

"Is that where you got—" Soda cut himself off at a sharp look from Darry. It took me a second to realize Two-Bit hadn't told either of them that he was working for his old man. I wasn't too sure how to feel about that. I normally didn't keep secrets from my brothers, and after Rossey, I'd vowed never to do it again. But I couldn't see how Two-Bit working for his father would make any difference, so I just kept eating my chicken and mashed potatoes.

"Didja see the paper this morning?" Two-Bit asked, slurping down the milk Darry'd given him.

Another look passed around the room, and everybody seemed to be in on something but me. A cold, greasy feeling crept up in me and I put my drumstick down.

"Pony? You okay? You look funny," Soda said then, as if they hadn't just all been exchanging loaded glances.

"Just wondering what Two-Bit saw in the paper," I said, not missing the little wince that passed over his face. Tells.

Darry waved a hand and frowned. "Just another public outcry story, Pony. Nothing to get excited about."

I knew what he meant. After the church fire, me and Johnny got some mention in the papers. One article was in our favor, but there were several other spots that mentioned how rotten it was that we didn't serve time for what happened to Bob. Those articles tended to skip right over the fact that Johnny was dead and that me, Darry, and Soda were under the state's microscope ever since. And now the press would start again, I guess.

I picked up my drumstick again, and I gnawed on it some more, even though the flavor had gone out of it. There wasn't much we could do, I didn't think. The judge probably already had his mind made up. Just a formality to go stand in front of him again. I wasn't feeling too hopeful. Somehow, it seemed a better idea to prepare for the worst. That way, at least I could be relieved and happy if things fell short of that.

Once everybody finished, Soda dragged Two-Bit toward the kitchen to help with the dishes. He protested loudly about it being sissy work, at least until Darry went to tower in the doorway. "What was that you were saying, Two-Bit?" he asked coldly. But then he glanced at me over Two-Bit's head, and I could see the corners of Darry's mouth twitch just a little as he backpedaled. Darry gave him a good-natured shove into the kitchen, and then he tipped his chin in my direction. "Need a pill, Pony?"

I shrugged and winced. Bad idea. "I'm okay, Darry."

"You sure?" He looked doubtful.

"Yeah. I mean, don't sign me up for any track meets," I grinned, "but I'm feelin' alright."

I wasn't, really, but I was tired of floating in that surreal place while the world went by without me. I wanted to be right where I was, in the corner of the sofa, listening to Soda and Two-Bit having a water fight in the kitchen and Darry hollering at them to quit soaking the place. I wanted the noise of the game Darry flipped on, and the floor creaking in protest as he dragged the armchair back out of our room and settled in it with the rest of his beer.

Things were pretty low-key in the house that night. Darry watched the game, while Two-Bit, Soda, and I played Oklahoma Gin because Soda said he was tired of whuppin' Two-Bit at Blackjack. I tried not to think about the hearing, seeing as how the date hadn't even been set yet. Darry likes to say no sense worrying without a reason, even though most times, it makes him a hypocrite.

A thunderstorm rumbled in toward the end of the game, and Darry snapped off the set as soon as the final score was in, just in time for the lights to flick out with it. Everybody was edgier than they let on, I guess, because every one of us nearly jumped out of our skin.

"Well," Two-Bit chuckled, "I guess that's the Upstairs tellin' us to call it a night."

"You stayin'?" Soda asked in the darkness. His hand hit me in the face when he reached down to give me a hand up off the sofa. I tried to swallow a grunt and was grateful when the thunder chose that moment to let out a hearty crack. I still didn't want those pills. I was ready to be back in the world, even if my body wasn't.

"Why not? Save me a walk over for breakfast," he quipped.

"Call your mother," Darry ordered, already headed down the hall to his room. Unlike Dally or Johnny or even Tim, Two-Bit had it pretty good at home and didn't really end up on our sofa too much. He usually only stayed over when he was too drunk or lazy to head home, or if the Socs started picking more fights than usual and he didn't have his car to drive home in.

"Yeah, yeah," Two-Bit grumbled. "Might just as well go home, if you're gonna nag at me…"

That last part was under his breath, and Darry wasn't meant to hear it. But he did, and by the sound of his voice I thought his mouth might be twitching just a little again. But all he said was, "Don't get mouthy, _Keith Alan Matthews,_ or I'll call your mother, myself."

I eased into bed, glad Darry wasn't there to see me making faces. I wondered if there would be many more nights like this in our future. Just ordinary nights, just at home with my brothers and whatever members of the gang dropped by. And I wondered if they'd be just the same without me, holding my place until I could finally get back. Because I would get back. No matter how long it took, I decided. If they put me in a home until I turned eighteen, no matter what, I'd come back. Because I'd never really _be_ home unless it was walking up our front porch and bursting in through that squeaky old screen door.


	13. Chapter 13

Std Disclaimer: I don't own anything even remotely relating to the Outsiders, but this is my own work

_**Std Disclaimer: I don't own anything even remotely relating to the Outsiders, but this is my own work. Blah, blah, blah.**_

* * *

Without that pill, I had a tough time sleeping. My back was killing me, and the zippered gash was starting to ache and itch. But I really didn't like that disconnected feeling. I guessed I probably should have agreed to take the pill at bedtime, though. I wouldn't have tossed and turned so much, and there wasn't anything going on to feel disconnected from. But I couldn't quite drag myself out of bed to look for them in the kitchen, either, so I just drifted in and out of a restless sleep until dawn.

I was the first one out of bed, and I was hungry. I wasn't up to making anything or cooking for everyone, though, so I just grabbed an orange to tide me over until Darry or Soda woke up. I tried to figure out what day it was. With Darry off of work, it was tough because he typically doesn't work weekends unless he takes on an emergency roofing job, but Soda could just as easily work a Tuesday as a Sunday.

The paper on the kitchen table was Wednesday's, but I couldn't necessarily trust that. Darry often kept the Wednesday edition because that's the one that had the sports scoreboards and a lot of special articles about the upcoming weekend's games. And, truth be known, the grocery ads. Darry clipped coupons, which, when you think about it, is kinda funny. Just imagine your tough big brother getting excited over a nickel off Wonder Bread.

I couldn't ask anyone what day it was, because they'd probably start looking at each other funny like they did last night, which still made me uneasy. I sure wondered what was in that article.

I sat and ate my orange and listened to the sounds my brothers made waking up. Darry was first. His footsteps are heavier than Soda's and usually full of purpose. I could track him easily. Bathroom. The taps groaned open and he took his usual quick, boiling hot shower. Darry may like the night air, but he says he needs the hottest water he can get to work all the kinks out from the day before.

He would be in front of the sink, now, I mused as I slowly chewed another wedge. He shaves like there's a speed record to beat. Me and Soda are always amazed when he doesn't come out with a single nick.

His boots clomped down the hall a bit more and stopped. He'd be waking Soda now, and noticing I wasn't in bed.

From Soda's groan I could tell he'd just begged Darry for five more minutes, even though I couldn't make out the actual words. But Darry ignored him and clomped on into the kitchen.

"Hey, Pony." He took in my orange, and I could tell he didn't like what he saw when he gave me the once over. "You're up early. You hurtin'?"

I shrugged. And winced. "Some," I admitted. He reached for the little amber pill bottle behind the sink, and I shook my head. "Darry, can't I just have a couple aspirin?"

"You think that'll do it?"

I didn't think so, but I didn't tell him that. I just shrugged again, clamping my jaw tight so I wouldn't wince again.

"Hey, neighbors!" Tim called out, and when he rounded the living room and saw me, he stopped on a dime. "Glory be, kid," he grinned wryly, "It's good to see you up outta that bed." But there it was again. He and Darry exchanged a look, and Tim nodded toward the back of the house. "Soda back there someplace?"

I stopped eating the orange, but I swallowed the two aspirin Darry gave me and wished I'd thought to take some before he got out of bed. He wouldn't give me four, so I usually had to sneak the extras when he wasn't looking.

"Shower," Darry nodded, cracking eggs into the cast iron skillet that usually hung behind our stove. To Tim, he said, "Sit down. You've got time to eat, don't you?"

"Don't guess I have much choice either way," Tim said, easing into a chair across from me. "But I hope you're not plannin' to make me late to work."

I guessed Darry must have apologized to him for accusing him of being the one to help Rossey, because they were back to their old selves. Or mostly. Darry never quite lost the wariness he took on after Tim's last stint in the joint. That was another thing I wondered about. It wasn't like Darry to hold a grudge against someone just for doing time. He'd liked Dally just fine, after all.

Soda was the only one acting normal. He slid into the kitchen in his stocking feet with so much momentum that he crashed into Darry, which made the two of us burst into laughter. Tim even cracked a grin. Of course, it pulled at the stupid stitches and didn't make my head or neck feel too hot, either, so I sobered up quicker than I might have. Darry just tossed him an irritated look.

"Make yourself useful, Soda," he said. "Start the toast."

Soda made a face at him when he wasn't looking, and I grinned with him.

Darry and Tim finished their platefuls almost before Darry even set the plates down, and then Darry nodded at me.

"Pony, I'm going to drop Soda at the DX and Tim at the plant. I'll be right back after that."

I blinked at him. "I ain't twelve, Darry," I said, rolling my eyes.

He gave me a look. Soda slapped him on the back.

"Quit worrying, Darry," he said. "You turned the stove off. It's not like the house is gonna burn down while we're gone."

* * *

I used the time when Darry was gone to swipe those other two aspirins I wanted. It was a pain in the ass feeling well enough that I didn't want to lie in bed all day but lousy enough that I couldn't reasonably do much else. There was nothing in the house I hadn't read and the TV made my head hurt, so I sifted through the newspapers on the kitchen table. But Darry had only left the sports pages and the coupons, and neither one grabbed at me.

The only school book I had at home was my history book, so I eased down onto the couch and tried to read that. I figured I was probably pretty far behind by now, anyway. Either the aspirin kicked in or the boredom got me. I was asleep before Darry made it back home.

I woke up hot under two blankets, so thirsty that my tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth. The house smelled like warm chocolate cake, so I figured Darry was bored out of his mind.

When I got off the couch, the world spun. I suddenly felt like I might throw up, so I made my way straight to the bathroom. But it passed, and I thought maybe I was just real hungry, since it was three o'clock already. I'd slept clear through lunch. Darry was at the sink doing dishes. Seemed like he was always doing dishes lately. Or making dishes dirty just so he could clean them.

He looked startled to see me. "Pony," he blinked, as if he thought he might be imagining me, "I didn't hear you get up."

I put a pot on the stove but couldn't lift my left arm high enough to get a can of soup from the cupboard. Darry frowned and pulled down two cans of stew, instead. I didn't argue.

"Go sit down," he said. "You don't look too good."

I didn't argue. I didn't feel too good. I was tired of it, too. And things still didn't feel right. It was like our house was all charged up with something, waiting. Holding its breath. The loaded looks that Darry and Tim had passed around that morning, and the same looks that Darry and Soda and Two-Bit passed around last night...I was missing something. Something big. Something that made even Two-Bit get serious for a change, and that was hard to do. But I didn't know how to ask about it. I wasn't sure I wanted to know, either.

I figured I probably already _did _know. I thought maybe the state had decided to put me in a home but maybe they were waiting for me to get better first. Maybe they couldn't put you anyplace when you were sick or banged up. No. That wasn't true. Otherwise, they could never pull guys like Johnny out of their homes because their parents would just keep hurting them, trapping them there.

Something was up, though. I decided I'd wait until Soda got home, and then I'd make them tell me.


	14. Chapter 14

_**Std Disclaimer: I don't own anything even remotely relating to the Outsiders, but this is my own work. Blah, blah, blah.**_

* * *

I chickened out, at least for a little while. Soda came banging in the house just before Darry pulled the cornbread out of the oven. He was early. He didn't usually get off until five. Not right. I had the perfect chance to corner them, but I let it slip by as Soda dipped a spoon into the stew and gave it a taste test.

Darry told him to take the trash out, which is usually my job. Soda didn't even make a token protest. He just swooped the can out of the corner and disappeared. Normally you have to tell him six times and then threaten him to get him to do anything. Just more proof that everything was messed up, I guess.

Two-Bit must have shown up, because I heard shouting and laughter outside, and then it spilled inside onto the rug and kicked an ashtray off the coffee table. The sound of them pounding on each other didn't even register with Darry, he just kept ladling stew into bowls. Not right. Not right. Not right.

Things finally came to a head as we finished up dinner in silence. By the time we started eating, I'd grown so scared that every time I opened my mouth to demand answers, I put a spoonful of stew in it, instead, to shut myself up. And then I went back to the couch, and Darry went nervously to his armchair and flipped on the TV to a news show, his knee bouncing out an edgy tune. Soda and Two-Bit were having second helpings of cake in the kitchen.

Tim poked his head in the screen door. There it was again, that look. He and Darry locked eyes.

"Soda around?" Tim asked.

"Dishes," Darry nodded. And then he looked at me. "Let's go," he said to Tim, still looking at me.

"Where you goin'?" I asked, and Darry looked cornered.

"I'm just driving Tim to the plant, Pony. He's working a double shift tonight."

"Darry," I half-yelled, sending ripples of pain down my back, "quit lyin'! You and me and Soda, we don't lie to each other. So quit dancin' around it, whatever it is!"

Darry sank down on the sofa beside me and looked at me with such helplessness that a lump bubbled up into my throat. He put his head in his hands, scrubbed his hair with his fingers.

"The judge's decision for probationary custody is being challenged by the state prosecutor," he said flatly. "Prosecutor wants to bring you up on charges for aiding and abetting a criminal." He paused for a long time. "Soda, too."

I went cold.

"You've been in bad shape," he blinked fast, choking up. "We were scared if we told you, you'd get worse."

He wouldn't look at me.

"Don't they want to hear my side?" I asked, my throat getting tighter by the second. "Can't I go in there and explain?"

He shrugged. "Right now, I'm just meeting with the lawyers a lot. That's where Tim and I are headed now."

I looked accusingly at Tim. He just shrugged.

"Figured if I showed up for moral support, they'd realize you and Soda were harmless in comparison," Tim didn't look at me. It sure wasn't like him to be afraid to look a fifteen year old kid in the face.

Darry gave me that helpless look again, and I couldn't help it. I started to cry. But I turned my face away, toward the kitchen, so he wouldn't see. Darry's not stupid, though. He reached out and rubbed the back of my head for a second. Then he just got up and dug his keys out of his pocket.

"I'm coming with you," I decided, and ignored the way the room spun when I got up again.

"Pony, sit down. You're not up to it yet."

"I'm going," I repeated and went out on the porch to prove it.

Darry didn't like it, not at all. First off, I was wearing only boxers and a t-shirt. Second, I was already shaking with fear, and I'm pretty sure he could see it. But he knew he couldn't keep arguing with me or he'd be late, and that wouldn't look good.

"Soda!" he called. "Go get Pony some jeans and his shoes!"

Five minutes later, we left Tim frowning on the porch next to Two-Bit and headed downtown to the lawyer's office. My back and head were killing me, but my feelings were numb. Nobody spoke, but I felt Soda shake a little beside me. It scared me worse than anything.

* * *

It was nothing like on TV, but I knew that already from the last time I'd been in the courthouse. Except we weren't in the courtroom, just a dingy little room in the upstairs part of the courthouse where a lot of lawyers, judges, and even a couple doctors had their offices.

They sat me at a table across from both our lawyer and the state prosecutor, and they put Darry and Soda in some chairs next to the door. Darry said I still wasn't feeling good and if they got too rough on me, he'd march me right out of there and to hell with the consequences. The lawyers didn't respond to that. Another man entered the room and he introduced himself to me as Judge Herman Stout. He said he was going to sit in the room and listen while I gave my side of things to the lawyers, but that this wasn't a hearing or a trial and he wouldn't be in charge of deciding what happened next. Then our lawyer, a guy named Stanley Sikes, said calmly,

"Ponyboy, what we really need to determine is whether you helped Carl Rossey to elude the sheriff and his deputies, and if you did, why you did."

"I did it," I admitted, taking a deep breath. I didn't figure there was any way they didn't know the truth already, seeing as how I'd spilled my guts to the social worker at the hospital.

I went on to explain about working at the railroad and watching the way the wardens treated the chain gang, withholding water and clubbing them with the butts of their rifles. "One day, one of the cons keeled over from heatstroke, and they took care of him. I thought things would get better after that, but they didn't."

Sikes nodded. The state prosecutor hadn't said a word, but he wrote furiously on his yellow notepad. "So, you felt sorry for those men because you thought they were being treated poorly."

I froze. Was that a good thing, or a bad thing? Would it help us or hurt us? My head started pounding. The state prosecutor looked up from his notepad and I fought back another lump in my throat. "When the wardens weren't looking, I set a water pail down in front of one of the cons. I didn't know it then, but it was Carl Rossey. McMasters turned around about then and saw him getting ready to drink, and he knocked the ladle out of Rossey's hands."

I paused, fully expecting the state prosecutor to start asking questions, but he didn't. Sikes encouraged me to continue, so I told them how I almost fell off the bridge and Darry and I fought and how the next day, we fought again and I ran off to the pond. I left out the part about Darry telling me not to come back, though. Instead, I explained about Rossey pulling me out of the water with a gun and how I was scared I'd never see my brothers again. Darry just blinked and swallowed at that part, and Soda leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

I told the lawyers I was scared because I'd told Rossey too much and thought he might come look us up if I didn't help him. That was the truth, but it wasn't the whole truth. A wave of heat washed over me, followed quickly by an icy chill.

"Ponyboy," Sikes said sympathetically, "that must've been pretty frightening for you. How did you get away?"

"I did what he said," I shrugged. "Rossey told me he needed something to get the chains off, and I didn't figure it was something I could say no to. He knew who I was and where I lived and how to get even with me if I didn't do what he wanted," I said. I didn't tell them how he reminded me of Dally and how I'd thought he couldn't be all that bad.

"Why not go to the sheriff at that point?" Klein, the state prosecutor, finally spoke up.

"You ever see what happens when a greaser goes to the sheriff?" I asked him sharply, sending pain rocketing and ricocheting through me. I didn't wait for him to answer, either. "They take a report. Maybe they spend a few minutes tellin' us how we probably deserved whatever we got. Then they put that report in the circular file. So we don't bother."

This time I waited, but neither Sikes nor Klein said anything. Darry and Soda were both leaning forward now, listening intently.

"Next morning, I grabbed Darry's hammer and spike and I took it to Rossey with some food. He put the gun on me again and started to work on the chains."

"Why didn't you run away while he was busy with the chains?" Klein asked. I guess Soda saw me wince as I turned to look Klein full in the face.

Clearly disgusted, Soda leapt to his feet and snapped, "Who're you kiddin', man? Maybe if he gets up and runs, he gets a few feet, but what then? Bullet in the back?"

"Easy, Soda," Darry cautioned, pulling him back into his chair. "I warned you, Klein, about getting Pony all worked up. Let him finish before you start hassling him."

"What I'd like to understand, Ponyboy," Klein said in a sickly, friendly voice, "is how Soda got involved."

I sighed and explained about Rossey asking for street clothes, me being late for school, and Darry catching me at it. I told them I didn't want to get into worse trouble, so I convinced Soda to take him the clothes, instead. "And when Soda went into the barn, I guess he scared Rossey and Rossey shot him." I thought about how still and pale Soda had been and my stomach twisted up in knots.

"What was he doing in that barn?"

That annoyed me. It was just like lawyers did on TV, asking questions they already knew the answers to just so they could twist it up into something unrecognizable. "I told him to hide there until the three o'clock train to Windrixville."

Klein nodded and looked smug. Sikes didn't look too worried, and the judge didn't look any which way at all. "So," Klein said, tapping the eraser of his pencil on his full yellow pad, "seeing as how Windrixville hid you and Johnny so well, you knew it was a good place to avoid capture. You—"

"Don't you talk about Johnny!" I shouted, leaping up from my chair. My head spun, and my blood rushed in my ears.

"Why not? He killed a boy, and you helped him hide, just like you helped Rossey."

Angry, I started around the edge of the desk, intending to slam out of the stuffy little room. Then I saw Darry rush forward as the swirling, roaring black reached up and pulled me down.


	15. Chapter 15

Std Disclaimer: I don't own anything even remotely relating to the Outsiders, but this is my own work

_**Std Disclaimer: I don't own anything even remotely relating to the Outsiders, but this is my own work. Blah, blah, blah.**_

* * *

"Ponyboy?"

I didn't recognize the voice, so I didn't answer. I was still awful mad at that Klein jerk.

"Ponyboy, can you hear me?"

There was a scuffling in the background somewhere, then Soda's voice cried out,

"Darry, don't! It's not worth it! You want the state to take Pony away because you couldn't hold your temper?"

I opened my eyes. "Darry?" I knew he'd stop whatever it was he was doing, so I used it to my advantage. He promptly forgot about wanting to kill Klein and crouched down on his heels beside me. A guy I didn't recognize was peering down at me from above, frowning.

"Pony," Darry said softly, pushing my hair back. "Jesus, you're warm. Can you get up?"

I held out a hand and he took it, pulling me up. I swayed on my feet a little, so Darry and the stranger eased me backward into the chair Soda had been sitting in. The stranger dipped downward, sitting back on his heels. He was dressed like a soc on the weekend: crisp blue jeans and a madras shirt, with a fancy watch on his left wrist. But the funny thing was, his hair curled down around his collar, like a greaser.

"I'm Dr. Joseph, Ponyboy," he said, offering his hand. I shook it warily. I didn't much like doctors, and they pretty much didn't like us. Doctors were just socs with fancy degrees, after all.

Dr. Joseph straightened back up and listened to Darry explain what had happened to me, and then Soda eased my shirt up to show him my back. Dr. Joseph suggested coming down to his office at the end of the hall so he could have a better look.

Darry and Soda walked on either side of me, which was good because my legs felt like jelly again. Up on the table, they helped me out of my shirt as gently as they could, but I still didn't manage to stifle the moan.

"Easy, Pony," Darry said, staying beside me. I could tell he was afraid I'd faint again and fall off the table.

"Hey, kid," the doctor whistled low, "you're one big, nasty bruise back here." He sure didn't sound like any other doctor I'd ever been around. He tucked a thermometer under my tongue, and then he put on some gloves and put something on my back that felt like acid.

Soda got the waste can in front of me just in time. I lost supper, my stomach revolting against the horrible fire that started from whatever it was the doctor had put on my gash. Finally, after I heaved dry a few times, Darry handed me a paper cup of water and said,

"Rinse."

I spat the water into the can, and Soda tucked it back into the corner.

"Sorry about that, kid," Dr. Joseph said, popping a fresh thermometer in my mouth after retrieving the one that went into the can and putting it in the bottom of the sink to disinfect later.

I leaned wearily against Soda. Dr. Joseph put one hand on my head and used the other to flash a light in my eyes.

"Where did you get this concussion, Ponyboy?" He asked absently, in that way you did when you were fascinated with something else. And what he was fascinated with just then was blinding me with the stupid light. He left it there so long I thought he'd burn my eye out, and then he did the same to the other.

"Same time as his back," Soda offered.

"He had one before," Darry added. "Last year, about this time."

Dr. Joseph straightened when he heard that, and he tilted his head to one side, putting one hand against his chin as if deep in thought. "Do you suppose we ought to start making him wear a helmet?"

I laughed. Soda did, too. Dr. Joseph smiled benignly and explained that the gash on my back was badly infected and full of pus. Even though it was too early for it, he was going to have to take the stitches out and pack the wound to allow the infection to drain away.

He pulled the thermometer out of my mouth and his eyebrows rose.

"And you're cooking like a steak, Ponyboy," he said, shaking out the thermometer. I cracked another grin in spite of how lousy I felt. As far as doctors went, I guessed he wasn't so bad, after all. I wondered why he didn't talk or act like most doctors. Soda, the doofus, wondered the same thing out loud.

Dr. Joseph wasn't insulted. He just grinned. "Well," he explained as he moved behind me, "I'm just a Texas boy at heart, I guess. You don't have to throw around a bunch of words with 92 syllables, anyway. That just scares the pants off people and gives doctors a bad reputation. Hey," he said as an afterthought, "one of you might want to keep an eye on him so he doesn't tip forward off the edge of the table." And then to me, he said, "Kid, I'm not fond of lying to people. This is gonna hurt like a son of a gun. Holler if you want. We won't tell anybody."

And I _did_ holler. If you want to know, pulling stitches from an infected wound before they're ready to be pulled is probably the worst thing I'd ever felt. Darry and Soda had to grab my arms and hold me still. Otherwise, I'd have been off that table and down the hall and probably around the block, too. And for good measure, after Dr. Joseph was done with that, he put more of that acid on my back. I heaved again, but nothing came up. Which was good, because Soda couldn't hold me down and grab the waste can, too.

When he was done, and Darry and Soda finally trusted me not to faint or escape, Dr. Joseph stood and studied me for a minute. He didn't say anything, just considered me. And then he shook his head.

"You've got no business being out of bed, kid," he said, filling a needle with liquid. "I've half a mind to drop you in Tulsa General and hide the key for a week. But I don't think there's much they can do for you that your brothers can't do at home for free, so let's try that first." Without warning, he stabbed my side with the needle. "So I'm just going to juice you up with antibiotics, and I'm going to give you some of this ointment you seem to love so much to take home. Your brothers can have fun holding you down twice a day for that. It's a good time to get even for all of the gray hairs you've been giving them."

Dr. Joseph proceeded to wedge funny noodle-shaped rolls of cotton against the gash, then covered those with gauze and tape. Lastly, he handed Darry a bottle of pills. "These will get you through the weekend," he said, scribbling on a pad. "Fill this on Monday. Three a day for ten days. Go to bed until that fever breaks. No school until further notice." He winked at me.

Darry, still beside me, rubbed my head and nodded. Then he pulled a different bottle out of his back pocket and offered it to Dr. Joseph. "The hospital had us giving him these. Should we stop?"

Dr. Joseph squinted down at the label. "Well," he sighed, "they'll play just fine with the ones I gave you, but these are pretty strong. I'm surprised anyone would feel they were necessary." His eyebrows lifted. "I'm sure you've noticed how fast they work, too. They won't hurt him in the short run, but they're somewhat addictive and absolutely more powerful than even Frankenstein here needs."

Darry's mouth twitched, and when Dr. Joseph tried to hand them back, Darry shook his head. "I don't want my brother addicted to anything stronger than chocolate milk," he said.

The doctor grinned and sent the pills sailing into the waste can. Then he put a gentle hand on my shoulder. "Okay, Ponyboy, get well soon. I want to see you back here in a week so we can see what color your back is."

I smiled weakly and nodded.

"Thanks a lot, Dr. Joseph," Darry said. I could tell he was genuinely grateful. "What do we owe you?"

The doctor just winked at him, too. "First one's free. Next week, bring the wheelbarrow full of cash."

Soda chuckled. "Uh-oh," he said.

The doctor booked us for the following Friday, and he didn't react at all when Darry asked for the latest appointment available. "Lucky for you," he said, "I'm a night owl. Just can't get enough of those patient charts. I close the office at five, but I'm usually here until seven. Just bang on the door if it's locked."

It was pouring rain as we left, Darry on one side and Soda on the other. I was dizzy and shivering. Darry shrugged out of his jacket and he and Soda held it over my head. And then they sandwiched me between them in the truck and flipped on the heater even though they were gonna roast. Darry slung his jacket over my chest backwards.

"Pony," he said loudly over the roar of Soda warming the engine, "I told you you weren't up to this. Next time, when I ask you to stay home, stay home." But he rubbed my head again as he said it, so I just nodded.

"I made things worse, didn't I?" I yawned. Now that we were out of the doctor's office, I had time to wonder what was going to happen next.

"I don't know," Soda answered, putting the truck in reverse. "I think it helped when you told them about the gun."

"I'm sorry you got shot," I blurted. "And I'm sorry I got us all in this mess."

"First off, Pony," Soda's voice took on a hard edge I'd never heard before. "you didn't pull that trigger. And I wanted to go. You said someone was in trouble, and the one thing you've never been is a liar. Maybe you didn't tell me everything, but you didn't lie to me."

"And second," Darry cut in, reading Soda's mind, "we've been under the threat of a foster home since well before Rossey entered the picture."

"Just seems like everything I do, I get it all wrong. Even when I'm trying to make things better, I just make things worse." I sighed sleepily, laying my head down on the back of the seat.

"This time you had help, little buddy," Darry said.

Things were silent for a few minutes, and I guess they thought I'd fallen asleep. Soda muttered a curse under his breath and complained about the traffic. "Must be an accident up ahead." And then the irritation left his voice. "Guess he's gonna sleep all the way home."

"That's okay," Darry said. "He needs the rest. He's not looking any better than the night we brought him home."

"Yeah," Soda agreed quietly.

It was silent again for a second, and then Darry spoke out of nowhere. "Sometimes I think I might know what that nightmare of his is about. The one he can't remember. I think they're taking you guys out of our house, and they're splitting you up. Or maybe they're letting you stay and just taking him. Let's face it, Soda," Darry sighed, "Pony could survive just fine without me, but if they split you up, I don't know. It'd kill him."

So I wasn't the only one worried. I mean, I knew I wasn't. But it was weird to hear Darry admit it. And it was worse to hear him admit that he didn't think I'd care if he wasn't there. Sometimes I thought so, too, but I realized just then that it wasn't true at all and never had been.

"Darry, that's wrong," Soda protested softly.

"No, it isn't," Darry argued back, his voice barely above a whisper. "He's just a kid, Soda. He doesn't know what it's really like, what I'm up against. He knows I work hard, and he knows I ride him. That's what he knows. And he knows I don't ride you. He thinks I'm just cold and mean and I like you better. He's a kid, Soda," Darry repeated. I wondered if he confided in Soda like this all the time, when I wasn't around. It almost sounded easy for him, so I wondered if that's why Soda got so upset at being in between. Because he had to hear me bellyache about Darry, only to hear Darry torture himself over me. "Pony doesn't understand it, Soda. Hell, I don't think you really do, either. I worry about both of you from sun up to sun down and everything in between. Most guys my age are still in college, on their way to being something. I'm treading water, trying not to go under." He sighed heavily. "If you and Pony don't make the most out of your lives, Soda, it's _my _fault. I didn't ask for that job, but it's my job. If I fail at it, it's not just get up and dust off and try again. If I fail, I lose my brothers. Some days I hate that job with everything in me, Soda. But I've never once not wanted Pony. I've never once not wanted you."

I was shocked at Darry's outpouring of emotion. Darry was pretty quiet, like me, unless he was nagging about something. It made another little ripple of fear course through me. Maybe things were just that serious. Maybe he felt the carousel, too, and wanted to get off. And instead, it just kept spinning faster and more out of control.

"Pony knows that, Darry," Soda was saying. "He just lost sight of it for a minute."

"No, Soda, he doesn't know," Darry argued. "I realized that when he saw those suitcases and took off like someone fired the starting pistol. What he knows is that I pick on him about where he is, who he's with, whether he's studying enough, whether he's done his chores. I've been so busy telling him everything that's wrong, I forget to tell him anything's right. If he knew all the things I think he's got just right, maybe he'd stop running and start talking. If I wasn't so hard on him, Soda, maybe he'd have told me about Rossey. Maybe I could have stopped it. I just wish he could understand that you're not the only one he can talk to."

It took everything I had, but I lifted one hand and dropped it on his knee. "I understand now, Darry."

He sucked in a breath and went stiff as a board. The last thing I felt before dropping off was his arm coming around me, squeezing gently.

* * *

A/N: Do you think Darry opened up too much? I'd like opinions.


	16. Chapter 16

_**Std Disclaimer: I don't own anything even remotely relating to the Outsiders, but this is my own work. Blah, blah, blah.**_

* * *

Judging by the time on our bedside clock, I slept for thirteen hours straight after that. The armchair was back, but it was empty. Soda's bed was not. Darry was flopped there, still in his jeans. I figured Soda hadn't wanted to go to work, but Buck could only put up with so much.

I slipped out of bed to the bathroom and back. My back didn't hurt half as bad as before. I was pretty thankful for that. When I crept back into the bedroom, Darry didn't stir, so I just lied there for a while, thinking about things.

What he'd said was on my mind. It was time for things to change. It was time for _me _to change. Darry had laid it all out last night in the truck. He loved us. He loved us so much he lived in fear all the time. I never really tried to see his perspective before. Not much, anyway.

It was time for me to grow up, to _really _start contributing to our family. No more sitting back, letting my big brothers take care of me. It was time someone did something for Darry. I wasn't sure what or how, but I would.

I started a list in my head of all the things in life that Darry loved. Fishing. Bowling. Baseball. Hockey. Football. Most sports, I guess, actually. I didn't come up with any big ideas, but it kept me from being bored out of my mind.

Darry woke up about an hour later, and he peeked over at me the second he got his eyes open. I cracked a small grin as he eased down beside me and dropped a hand on my forehead.

"Well," he said in a gravelly voice, "at least you're not burning alive anymore."

"Soda at work?" I asked. Then I wished I hadn't. There I go again, asking after Soda and ignoring the brother right in front of me.

"Yeah," he yawned. "He didn't want to go, but he's used up all his vacation time. You know Buck. He's only got so much patience," Darry echoed my thoughts.

"And I bet he used it all up telling Soda to fix Tim's car," I grinned again. Darry's own mouth tugged up at the corners, but then the smile left again.

"You were out of it again," he said, watching my face. I just blinked at him. "We were _this_ close to taking you back to the hospital," he said, pinching his thumb and forefinger together.

"What are you talking about?" I asked, puzzled. "I just saw that Dr. Joseph in the court building last night."

Darry just stared at me. "I've got news for you, little buddy, that was three days ago. We went to the lawyer's office on Friday, and it's Monday today."

"No kidding?" I asked weakly.

"No kidding. You passed out for about four hours after we got home, and then you woke up screaming bloody murder. You were still burning up, and you were out of your mind. You thought Rossey was on his way here," Darry explained. "You kept begging me and Soda to hide. And you wouldn't eat anything again. You were back to saying everything tasted like baloney. You don't remember?"

"Nope," I yawned. "But I'm starving."

"I'll bet. Want some oatmeal?"

"Sure," I agreed, though it isn't my favorite thing. "Long as it doesn't taste like baloney."

"What is it with you and baloney?" He shook his head. "You ate it all the time when you were little."

"Me and Johnny," I explained, "that's all we had to eat in Windrixville. Just baloney sandwiches."

Darry sighed and ruffled my hair. "It's been a hard couple years, huh?"

"Yeah, I guess," I said softly. He absently stroked my hair for a minute, looking far away. Then he got to his feet, yawned and stretched, and ambled out to the kitchen.

After I ate, Darry asked if I felt up to sitting on the couch for a while so he could change my sheets again. I tried to watch TV, but the noise wasn't doing anything for my head, so I just lied there and thought some more about Darry.

I tried not to think about school and how much homework I'd missed. I didn't know how I'd ever be able to catch up on math, which is my worst subject these days. Darry sure wouldn't like my grade card. There were only about two weeks of school left, and I'd missed two weeks already.

I picked up the remnant's of yesterday's paper, which was still scattered all over the coffee table and on the floor. I only really like the comics and the features, so I took those out and put the rest back on the table.

When I got to the end of the features section, there was a half page ad on the back page announcing a contest. The Tulsa Herald was looking for a hometown hero. It was an essay contest. All you had to do was write about your idea of a hero in less than 300 words. The winning author and their hero would get to see the St. Louis Cardinals play the Philadelphia Phillies at Busch Stadium.

I wondered if I should try to write something. Darry loved baseball, and it would be a real kick if he got to take that trip. Of course, I knew the chances of it happening were about as likely as Carl Rossey showing up at our door to say he was sorry, but I figured it would pass the time. I tore that page off and tucked it into my history book, which was still on the coffee table, and then I picked up the comics and started on those.

After the comics, I tried reading the last history chapter we'd been assigned, but my mind kept drifting all over the place. I wondered how much I'd missed at school, whether Soda was going to get Tim's car working again, and what was going to happen at that hearing. It never really left my head. I pushed it to the back of things, but it always popped back up again. It was hard to believe that we might be living our last days together. I couldn't imagine having to pack my stuff and live somewhere else. I tried, but I always just pictured our house with the sagging porch and the cramped rooms.

Right about then, I noticed a stack of books on the floor by the front door. I sure hadn't brought any of them home, but when I looked down at them I recognized the pencil-lead dents in the cover of my English book. Anything had to be better than history. I scooped them up and dropped them on the coffee table next to the history book.

Darry poked his head in sometime later, as I was finishing up _The Old Man and the Sea_. "How about some lunch?"

"Do we have any chili?" I followed Darry into the kitchen.

"I'm not sure. Think you're up to something like that?"

I nodded. "I'm gonna take a shower."

He poked around in the cupboard and came up with a can. "Need help with your shirt?"

I lifted my arms experimentally. "No. I think I got it."

"I'll bring some fresh clothes in as soon as I get this on the stove," he called after me as I headed down the hall.

Sure enough, when I got out of the shower a few minutes later, fresh shorts and a t-shirt were folded on the toilet lid. It was a lot easier to put them on than it had been the last time. I felt pretty relieved about that. I was tired of feeling so bad, and I know Darry and Soda had about worried themselves to death over me.

Darry and I sat at the table with bowls of chili and buttered bread. He made small talk as he ate, which just went to show how itchy he probably was to get back to work. He told me Randy Anderson had stopped by with my school books and notes from the classes that he had with me. I didn't know what to make of that. I didn't really see us as friends, but I didn't really see us as enemies, either. I guess Darry saw my brow furrow because he said,

"Just do your best, Pony, that's all I ask."

I nodded.

"I'm going back to work tomorrow," he told me. "I can't put it off any more. Yarnell was pretty steamed when I called off today."

"That's ok," I said.

"Two-Bit said he'd try to drop by and make sure you were okay." He was watching me again. He'd been doing that a lot lately.

"I'll be fine. I'll be buried up to my nose in homework. I don't think you can get into too much trouble like that." I shrugged.

"Dr. Joseph's been coming by while you've been so sick," Darry mentioned, and my head shot up.

"Here? What for?"

"We called his office first thing Saturday morning. We weren't sure whether to take you to the hospital or not. I didn't really think he was going to answer at his office on a Saturday, but he did." Darry shook his head. "He came over and took a look at you. Stayed a couple hours. Came by after his family got out of church yesterday. He'll probably stop by later today, even though I called him while you were in the shower and told him you were up and around. He wants to see you tomorrow instead of Friday, so I'm going to come straight here after work tomorrow."

I'd never seen a doctor that made house calls, except on TV. I didn't think they even did that anymore. I tried to imagine how someone like Dr. Joseph would see our place, with all of its well worn, sagging furniture and the clean but threadbare rugs rolled out on scratched wood floors. I couldn't really do it.

"He wants you out of school next week, too, but I called the school and had your teachers agree to give your work to Two-Bit or Randy. Do as much as you can. Your grades might slip a little, but you should still pass everything."

I was starting to get a headache, what with all this weird new stuff to think about. Randy had come by before, after the rumble while I was still in bed. I'd been a little embarrassed then, too, wondering what he had to be thinking about our messy bedroom with books scattered all over every available surface. And Darry. I didn't think he'd said so much to me in my entire life as he said that afternoon, sitting at the kitchen table sopping up chili with buttered bread.

And then we were finished. Darry looked at our empty bowls and glasses and pushed away from the table to gather them up. Then he said I'd probably better get started on some of that homework, and I relaxed a little. It was familiar territory, and I was glad.

I started with English because it was easy for me, and I didn't have to work at it like math. There was a packet of questions about _The Old Man and the Sea_. I finished most of them and decided to come back to the rest later, after I finished the last two chapters. The next assignment was harder. The rest of our class had finished with Hemingway a week and a half ago, and they'd moved on to our last book of the year, _Great Expectations._ I had just over a week to read it and answer two packets of questions. It was no small book, either. But then something fell out of the book. It was a note from Mr. Harvey, my English teacher. He said there was a short synopsis of the book up through Chapter 27, and that he wanted me to get through the rest and answer the questions. He'd accept them in lieu of a final exam. I figured that was more than fair, so I tried not to worry about the other 32 chapters I had left.

I read the synopsis, but the story intrigued me so much that I went back and started with the first chapter, after all, though when I got to the part about Pip meeting up with the convict in the marsh, it sounded a little too close to home. I'd answered the first few packet questions when Darry caught me drowsing over them. He smirked and eased the book out of my hand, tucking the packet into the book and setting them on the coffee table next to my pencil. Then he flung the afghan over me, and I let sleep have me again.

* * *

A/N: Thanks to everyone who is still with me! Another (temporary?) return to "normalcy"…another lull before the storm.


	17. Chapter 17

_**Std Disclaimer: I don't own anything even remotely relating to the Outsiders, but this is my own work. Blah, blah, blah.**_

* * *

"Yes, I understand that. Yeah. The doctor has him out of school all next week, too, so I think that would mean he shouldn't be running around town…"

I listened to Darry's voice rise and fall. But it was no less angry. I think he just had to keep reminding himself that I was sleeping. Or had been, anyway.

"I'm not obstructing justice, Mr. Klein, I'm doing the best I can to keep Pony from getting sick again. In case you haven't forgotten, my brother passed out cold in your office less than a week ago."

I sat up. It was late in the afternoon, judging by the way the light slanted weakly into the house. Darry was sure pissed at Klein. From what it sounded like, we were being summoned back to his office.

"Yeah, well, I'll be calling our lawyer first if you don't mind."

Soda came in the door just then, and his face lit up at the sight of me. He sank down on the couch beside me, and I clapped a hand over his mouth.

"Shhh…Darry's on the phone with the state prosecutor. He sounds mad," I said.

"You're looking better, Pony," he whispered cheerfully. "Had us scared half to death again, you know that?" He squeezed my shoulder as if to make sure I was really there.

I nodded.

"Well, you do what you gotta do, and we'll do what we gotta do, and we'll see where we end up." Darry slammed the phone into the cradle. He seemed dismayed as he spun around the corner and into the living room to find me and Soda plainly eavesdropping on the couch. "State prosecutor just called," he explained unnecessarily. "The hearing's been set for Tuesday next week."

"Hell, he's barely over being delirious!" Soda argued, flinging an arm in my direction.

"That's what I told him, but he says if you and Pony don't show, the judge will hold you both in contempt. I've got to call Sikes," he muttered, yanking his wallet off the bookshelf.

We listened again as he talked to Sikes, and it was clear he wasn't having any luck, because he kept saying stuff like, "You've got to be kidding me! Yesterday, he was on fire, convinced that Rossey was coming to kill us all, and you expect him in court on Tuesday to face Klein and his Spanish Inquisition?" and "Do you remember what happened the last time Klein tried that?" There was a long pause. "He'd better, Sikes, because I swear to God, if he does that to Pony again, you'll be defending me for murder!"

The phone crashed down again. Darry stormed into the room and slapped his wallet back down on the bookshelf. He was mad as I'd ever seen him. He didn't have to tell us the hearing was still set for Tuesday.

"That's okay, Darry," I said, "I feel a lot better." It wasn't a lie. The worst was truly over.

"Good," Darry said, catching Soda's wallet. He took out the portion of Soda's pay that went to the household expenses and tossed it back. "Soda, it's your turn to make dinner. I'm going to get a shower."

"Great," I joked. "What's it gonna be? Blue mashed potatoes? Purple spaghetti sauce?"

Soda laughed and punched my shoulder. "Both, if you don't button it!"

It was pretty relaxed in our house that night, despite the hearing hanging over our heads. I guess Darry and Soda were both so relieved I was okay, it was like a weight off our shoulders.

* * *

The next day, I woke up to find Darry and Soda already gone. They'd let me sleep in since I wasn't supposed to go to school, anyway. The sun had long been up, and the day was looking to be a warm one, judging by the temperature in the house.

I had a bowl of cold cereal and read Darry's note telling me to drink the rest of the orange juice because he was going to have Soda bring home some more. So I poured a glass to the very top with the last of it, and then sipped it down so I could walk with it and not spill any. Then I settled in on the couch and stared at the pile of books on the coffee table. I might not be physically going to school, but I was sure still going to be there.

I sighed and grabbed my history book from next to the pile. Something fluttered out. Oh. Right. The ad for the contest. I thought about it for a minute, then I drew a sheet of blank notebook paper out of my binder and tried to figure out how to fit how I felt about Darry into less than 300 words.

An hour later, there were a dozen little crumpled balls of paper strewn all over the living room. Some I'd thrown farther than others, because some made me angrier than others. Everything came out stupid or childish, and I wondered why I was bothering at all. Nobody ever won those things, anyway. And if someone did, it would probably be a soc.

Still, after another hour, I finally had a finished copy (and a very messy draft). It was a good thing, too, because I hadn't noticed how close we were to the deadline for entries. Just a week away, and another couple days until they chose the winner after that. I slid the finished copy into an envelope and walked it out to the mailbox. I still wasn't satisfied with it, but I figured Darry'd bust my hump if I wasted any more time not doing my homework.

I finished my orange juice as I read over the rough draft, past all the scratched out parts and penciled-over corrections.

_**"Sometimes, a guy has to grow up really fast and start acting like a grownup even though he's just a kid. He might be scared. He might get lonely. He might just want to run away. But instead, he gets up every day, gets breakfast for his two younger brothers, sees them off to school or work, and spends the rest of his day on a hot rooftop laying shingles until his whole body aches and he can barely stagger in the door. He fixes dinner, cleans up, and falls into bed only to start all over again the next day.**_

_**Maybe he used to think about college and playing baseball and hanging around with his buddies, but he hasn't thought about any of that in a long time. What's the point? Tomorrow is just more of the same. Still, every once in a while, he's back on the field, glove hugging his hand, in a showdown with some faceless guy from the other team.**_

_**Darrel Curtis is my brother, but he's also my hero. If I could have one wish, it would be to give him back just one day…a day back before our parents were killed in a car accident, when Darry was pitcher for the Oklahoma All-Stars College Freshman team, facing down the best batters in six counties. I'd give him back cruising with his buddies, stopping at the drive-in, breaking curfew, and rolling his eyes when his kid brothers begged to tag along. I'd give him back 20…20 years old, life rolled out ahead of him like a red carpet for a movie star."**_

I got itchy about that entry. I almost went and pulled it out of the mailbox a hundred times. But then I told myself I might as well send it. Dad always used to say you would never succeed if you didn't try. Sometimes, though, it really seems like you can't succeed even if you do.

I thought about Darry and how much he gave up. I'd always known it, but up until the other night in the truck, I'd never really _felt _it. If me and Soda got put in a home, it would all have been for nothing. Darry would have given up his future with nothing to show for it. Even if we were gone, he couldn't go back to school. Not unless he found a scholarship, and I didn't suppose there would be any such thing for a guy who'd graduated high school three years ago. Didn't they save the money for the new kids?

The afternoon passed in a blur of homework and anxiety about the hearing. Before I knew it, it was time to start expecting Darry to pull up to take me to my appointment with Dr. Joseph. I was surprised when Soda burst into the house and told me to get a move on, that Darry was waiting in the truck.

"What are you doing off work so early?" I asked, tugging on my jeans.

He shrugged. "Slow day. It should pick up tomorrow." He seemed annoyed about it, though. It wasn't the time to ask, though, so I just shoved my feet into my sneakers and pulled the door shut behind me.

* * *

When we stepped into the waiting room at Dr. Joseph's, he was standing by the receptionist's desk frowning at a clipboard. He looked up when the door opened.

"Hey, kid," he greeted, beckoning me back toward his office. Darry and Soda started to follow, but he held up a hand. "I think he can make it under his own steam this time, fellas."

They eased into chairs in the waiting area. They looked irritated and a little lost. Darry frowned and picked up a magazine.

The second I got on the table, Dr. Joseph started yammering cheerfully. It still surprised me how much like a doctor he…wasn't. "You know, kid, when I met you last week I couldn't figure out why your name sounded so familiar. I mean, it's not like you hear a name like Ponyboy every day."

"I guess not," I agreed.

He gestured to my shirt and I pulled it off. He pulled the tape and gauze off quickly, without warning. I yelped. "Sorry, kid. Better that way." He pulled the little cotton noodles off, some of them sticking to my wound. I hissed. "Sorry again. But you know, this is looking a lot better." He paused to drop the old gauze and cotton in the waste can. "Anyway, I was cleaning out the garage this weekend, and I came across some old newspapers. Saw and article about you and your brothers and how you and your buddy saved those kids from the church fire." He shook his head. I didn't really know what to say to that, or if he expected me to say anything. Then he asked me to raise my arms up over my head.

I did. I did it slowly, but I did it. Then he popped a thermometer in my mouth and went on inspecting the gash. It had become, so far as I knew, a thick, scabby, itchy ridge. It only hurt a little when he touched it, and I figured those must have been the deeper parts.

"Good. You're healing nicely. No signs of continuing infection. Your color is good," he said, "and…" he pulled the thermometer out of my mouth, "…you're only hot enough to spoil food, not cook it. How do you feel?"

"Pretty good," I said, shrugging. "Except I still sleep a lot."

"Probably the antibiotics and the malnutrition wearing off. Plenty of rest, plenty of sunshine, and you'll be all set for school on Monday," he nodded. Then he handed me a note for school and a page of exercises to increase my range of motion. I wondered if he was going to say anything else about the article, but he didn't. I thought that was strange. What was his point, then? Just to let me know he knew?

Darry and Soda stood up as I stepped out of the hall that led to the exam rooms. Dr. Joseph grinned at them. "He's almost back to his fighting weight. Just give him a few more days of rest, sunshine, light exertion, and a healthy diet. No more of that chocolate cake for breakfast stuff," he chided, scribbling on his clipboard again. Then he looked up at us. "Have it for dinner like normal folks," he joked. Soda laughed and pushed me out the door as Darry stepped up to the reception desk to talk about the fees.

There's nothing Darry hates worse than to have to try to work out payment arrangements. He'd been doing a lot of it lately, what with Soda's hospital visit and with mine.

I worried, wondering how we were going to come up with enough to cover all the bases. I thought about trying to find another job, now that the bridge was finished. I was sorry I hadn't been able to help those guys finish, actually. Maybe Carey knew of something else. I decided that some of that "light exertion" Dr. Joseph had mentioned could consist of me wandering down to the site trailer, if it was still at the bridge, and ask for a job.

* * *

A/N: The contest entry thing is corny, and I know that. There's a reason for the cheese. At least, a reason that makes sense to me…


	18. Chapter 18

_**Std Disclaimer: I don't own anything even remotely relating to the Outsiders, but this is my own work. Blah, blah, blah.**_

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The night before the hearing, I couldn't sleep. And when I finally drifted off, I had all these crazy disconnected dreams about Darry being lashed with a whip as his punishment for not keeping a better eye on me, Soda being put in an old fashioned stockade and made to wear a jester's hat, and everyone sneered at me as the judge said,

"I sentence you to the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. May God have mercy on your soul."

I woke up in a cold sweat. Then I dreamt that I ended up in a foster home on the soc side of town, and Two-Bit, Steve, and Tim jumped me before they realized it was me.

When Soda pounced on me to wake me up, I'd just barely gotten into a good, sound sleep. I didn't want to get up.

"C'mon, Pony," he said softly. "Time to face the music."

I looked at him, and I was surprised to see something like fear holding tight to his eyes. I got out of bed and dressed soundlessly in the crisp dress slacks and soc-y button down Darry had bought me. Walking down the hall to the kitchen felt a little like heading for a jail cell. We didn't any of us say two words to one another. We just ate, or pretended at it, anyway, and then we met each other's eyes one by one. And then we turned for the door together as if on cue.

* * *

The hearing was tough. Klein slammed me with questions about Rossey, implying that I had a history of helping criminals. He said I was constantly at odds with my brother, Darry, and had run away from home twice in two years. He said that alone spoke volumes about my lack of respect for authority and that it indicated that, at the very least, I should be placed in a more disciplined environment.

There was some discussion about aiding and abetting a criminal, and Klein requested that Soda and I spend some time in the Howard McLeod Correctional Center down in Atoka. It wasn't looking good.

I told my story exactly as I had that afternoon in their office on the floor above the courtroom. When I was done, Sikes asked me a few questions about school, my brothers, and my home life.

Soda testified about the shooting. He looked pretty unhappy telling them that I'd never told him I was helping a criminal. He looked about as guilty and helpless as I'd ever seen him, and I know he felt like he was turning a key to my prison cell, locking me in. He told Sikes we talked about _everything _and if I hadn't talked about it, I must have been keeping quiet out of fear.

To my surprise, Dr. Joseph came in and answered questions about my injuries, why I was missing so much school, and what he'd observed about my relationship with my brothers thus far. He told Sikes about my delirium and that I'd been terrorized by feelings that Rossey was coming to hurt my brothers and agreed with Soda's perception that I was deeply, deeply afraid of Rossey and the potential consequences if I refused to help him.

It took all day, the hearing. I could barely eat lunch, but Soda coaxed me into it by reminding me that I had to be ready for the last week of school. He threw grapes at my mouth, and I tried to catch them. We got a few dirty looks from some of the other folks eating hasty lunches out on the steps of the courthouse. When I realized somebody might slip and fall on our missed grapes, I picked them up even though Darry was nagging at me to hurry or we'd be late getting back inside.

The lawyers finished up their arguments right after lunch, and there was a short recess while the judge considered everything he'd heard. I thought I'd go nuts if he didn't come out of the back soon and just tell us our fates. The waiting had to be worse than the ruling at this point, even if the ruling was to pull us out of our house. The waiting led to thinking, and the thinking led to fear and regret and a bunch of useless wishes about what I hadn't done but should have.

Finally, though, the judge said his piece. He'd read the old articles about what happened in Windrixville and the new articles about Rossey and me. He felt we hadn't kept out of trouble as promised, but he also felt that I was not helping Rossey out of a desire to facilitate crime. He said that the court couldn't ignore my age and inexperience, or the fact that I'd been coerced by the mere presence of a weapon. He dismissed the criminal charges for aiding and abetting, which made me almost faint with relief. But then he paused and took a drink from the water glass on the bench, and he let the silence stretch out until I almost wanted to scream.

"Mr. Curtis," the judge began, "Ponyboy, I hope that you've come to realize that none of this might have happened if you hadn't chosen to storm out of the house that evening instead of staying home and facing the consequences of your actions. While I don't feel that you had criminal intent, I _do _feel that you are willfully disobedient. The path you are on is a troubled one, and in the interest of turning that around, I am sentencing you to spend the summer in the care of the Raton City Juvenile Military Camp in northern New Mexico. You will be in the company of the United States Marine Corps, and you will, I hope, learn to better appreciate your life with your brothers here in Tulsa after spending nine weeks in a rigorous, military environment." I think he must've seen the look on my face, because he tilted his head to look at me over the tops of his spectacles and said,

"Please understand, Mr. Curtis, that this judgement is not a punishment. It is a measure intended to teach you to better handle authority and to make wiser decisions." He waited until I nodded before adding that other than my stay at camp, he saw no reason to remove me from my home, provided I continued to do well in school and stayed out of the juvenile court system.

He moved on to Soda next. He explained that he felt getting shot was probably lesson enough when it came to doing favors for others when you didn't know all the details. He felt Soda's work history and lack of criminal record (other than what the judge called "that foolishness of walking on your hands in the street") were enough to show that he, too, needn't be pulled out of the home. "Stay out of trouble," the judge repeated. "Case dismissed."

* * *

Having gotten accustomed to frequent naps, I was pretty sleepy as we piled into Darry's truck. But I was pretty nervous about that military camp, too. Soda was pretty keyed up, relieved about the outcome. He hopped in beside Darry and hooted,

"Man! That judge really had me sweating bullets!" He glanced at me, grinning. He saw that I wasn't grinning back, so he stopped. "Pony, that camp thing, that'll be over so quick you won't even know you're gone."

"I don't need some camp," I groused. Darry looked at me evenly.

"Ponyboy, you should be thanking your lucky stars right now," he chided. "This could've been a whole lot worse."

I didn't tell them the judge had just ruined my plans for a summer job, or how lousy I felt that Soda and Darry would have to keep slaving away so hard, working all the overtime they could get while I was off hiking and swimming and doing whatever else it was a guy did at camp. So instead, I sighed and fell asleep against the door to the rattle and rumble of Darry's truck as he drove us back home.


	19. Chapter 19

_**Std Disclaimer: I don't own anything even remotely relating to the Outsiders, but this is my own work. Blah, blah, blah.**_

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With the hearing behind us, life returned to normal…or what passes for normal in our house. Darry and Soda were back at work, and I went back for the last week and a half of school, overloaded with papers and books to the point where Two-Bit volunteered to drive me my first day back.

That first day was sort of unreal. People I didn't even know were staring oddly at me as I made my way from class to class, and it felt a bit like it had the last time I'd come back from a long absence. I just ducked my head and ducked into or out of my classes without looking up too much.

By Friday, June 2nd, (the last day of school), I was nervous as hell about my grades. Darry'd spent about half the day the Sunday before helping me with Algebra, which tested his patience (and mine) to the limits.

The first half of the day wasn't bad. It was what I called the "easy" part: English (A-), World History (B+), and Biology (B-). Good grades. Nothing to sweat over. But I sure sweated all through lunch, afraid I would fail Algebra and have to repeat it.

"Hey, Pony!" Two-Bit greeted as I strolled up to him outside of shop class. "What's shakin'?"

"Me," I admitted. "I've got Algebra next. Me and Darry spent half the weekend on it. If I don't pass, he'll kill me!"

Two-Bit snorted. "Well, just figure how you'd feel if you had to take a third crack at senior year!"

I looked at him, surprised. He barely showed up for class, but I figured he'd get it this time for sure. It wasn't like he was stupid. He just had to keep repeating because he ditched too much to learn enough to pass the tests. "You mean you aren't graduating?"

He shrugged. "So far, so good, but I've got to see what Kleinfelter has to say." Chemistry. Not Two-Bit's strong point.

"Oh," I couldn't think of anything else to say. After shop class ended (A-), I dragged myself down 3 doors and saw the small crowd around the grade sheets tacked up on the wall at the back of the room. Two-Bit popped up behind me, so I sent him to look.

He came back grim. "It's not lookin' good, kid," he said, slinging an arm across my shoulders with a defeated sigh.

I squeezed my eyes shut. "F?" I squeaked.

"Hell, Pony, when have you ever gotten an 'F'?" Two-Bit knuckled my scalp. "C minus," he sighed. "I figured that was bad enough."

I laughed. "Not this time, man," I said.

Well, it wasn't the straight A's or even close that Darry was used to, but I figured he'd be okay with it, considering there were no D's or F's.

After seventh period, Two-Bit raced up behind me in the hall, dumping his notebooks into the nearest trash can. "Free at last!" he wailed. "Free at last! Thank Godamighty, I'm free at last!"

"So, you passed Chem?" I asked with a smile.

"I passed Chem," he agreed. I slapped him on the back and let the light mood settle over me. The shadow of that military camp was still out there, in the distance, but I wasn't going to worry about that today.

Two-Bit had to go to work straight from school, which he groused about, so I had to walk home alone. I guess the socs had better things to do, because no one bothered me. I was a little restless, wishing I had something to do besides go home and wait for Darry and Soda to get off of work. I thought about walking over to the DX, but it annoyed Steve and sometimes even got on Buck's nerves, so I didn't.

I grabbed the mail, but it was all junk and bills. A couple with that ominous red-ink look. I dropped them on the kitchen table and felt another flash of irritation that I wouldn't be home this summer to help out.

I happily dumped my folder on the desk in our room, free until fall. I was just settling in front of the TV with a slice of chocolate cake when someone rapped on the door. That told me it wasn't anyone we knew, because if it had been, the screen would have been shoving open at the same time, if they bothered to knock at all. So I set my snack on the coffee table and went to see who was there.

A guy in a suit stood on the porch with a guy holding a camera. Great. Reporters. What now?

"Hello, there," the man in the suit greeted. "We're looking for Ponyboy Curtis."

I nodded. "That's me," I said. I considered slamming the door, but finally I just asked, "Who are you?"

"Clark Devenger, Tulsa Herald. And this is David Tucker, one of our staff photographers." He stepped back, and I noticed a third man on the sidewalk, one foot on the bottom porch step. "And this is August Busch, owner of the St. Louis Cardinals."

No wonder he looked familiar! I started grinning ear to ear, even though I must've been red from my ears to my toes. I knew before they told me that my essay had somehow been chosen, but even though I knew it, I still couldn't believe it. And I couldn't say a word. My heart was blocking my throat.

"Oh, man!" I finally laughed. "Oh, man! Man!"

They just chuckled indulgently. Finally, after they figured the news had had time to set in, Mr. Devenger said,

"Your essay really touched our hearts. In fact, we'd like to meet your brother, Darrel, give him the good news. And the Tulsa Herald would like to tag along for your winning weekend, if that's acceptable to you."

"Well, gosh," I shook my head. "Darry's not home yet. He won't be here until after five."

Mr. Devenger nodded. "That's fine, Ponyboy. What do you say that these gentlemen and I come back around five-thirty. We can go over the details of your trip to St. Louis. The sixteenth will be here before you know it." At my blank look, he explained, "We'll fly you out on the sixteenth, the game will be on the seventeenth, and we'll fly you back home on the eighteenth."

I nodded again, still halfway thinking I'd wake up on the couch with an empty plate on my chest, nothing but chocolate cake crumbs left.

They departed, and I started straightening up like the social worker was coming. I was so excited, I was shaking. I had to keep telling myself it was real. Funny thing was, though, now that I had won, I wasn't sure I wanted it any more. I'd thought it would be tuff, me and Darry in St. Louis together. But the more I thought about my entry, the more it didn't really make sense. I'd meant every word of that essay, and that was the problem. But an idea started forming in my head, and that idea made it all okay again.

When Darry came home to the sight of me vacuuming, he asked what was going on. I shrugged.

"Just…"

"Pony," he said over his shoulder on the way to the bathroom, "Look, you did the best you could. If your report card is a little off, it's a little off." His voice came out muffled as he towled off his face. "You don't have to soften the blow," he said.

I grinned and pulled my report card out of my back pocket, glad to let him think it was about grades. He looked it over, then peeled his shirt off. He usually sponges off the dirt and sweat of the day and puts on a clean shirt after he gets home. I was glad for that habit, though I'd never really thought about it much before.

"Well," he said, ducking into the fresh shirt, "the Algebra could have been better, but you did really good considering. Nothing to feel bad about." He cracked a grin and punched my shoulder lightly. I just grinned back, glad for a reason to smile since I could barely keep a straight face.

A few minutes later, Darry was sipping a beer and watching the news. Soda came tearing into the house, and he was so jazzed up that I thought he'd somehow heard the news.

Instead, he jabbered a mile a minute about a private party at the Ace that night. "Big poker game," he was saying, "Lotsa big shirts. It's just for tips, but last year Steve made 75 in _one _night! _One_ night, Ponyboy! Buck said it's my turn this year, since Steve got it last year. And all I gotta do is keep the beer and peanuts coming and the ashtrays empty. Only thing is, I gotta wear black pants and a white dress shirt."

He poked around in Darry's closet, which was now where Mom and Dad's clothes used to be. I felt a little pinch, but I was too busy helping Soda find Darry's dress shirt. "Hey, Darry!" Soda yelled, darting down the hall, "do you still have that pair you said don't fit you anymore?"

"Back of my closet!" Darry called back just as a knock sounded on the door. I charged down the hall in time to slam into Soda. Darry rolled his eyes. "Pony, go help him. I'll get the door."

I didn't want to miss them telling Darry, though, so I just hid in the hall and watched.

"Darrel Curtis?"

I recognized Clark Devenger's voice even though I couldn't see him from where I was standing. I covered a laugh at the wary tone of Darry's voice.

"Can I help you?"

"Clark Devenger, Tulsa Herald. This fellow here is August Busch, owner of the St. Louis Cardinals, and—"

"Two-Bit!" Darry called, sticking his head out the front door to look for him. It sounded about like something Two-Bit would pull, least if he'd known about the contest.

There was an awkward pause, and then Devenger tried again. "Mr. Curtis, we ran a contest in the Sunday paper last month, and we were very impressed by Ponyboy's entry," he explained. At the sound of my name, Darry's head whipped around. Devenger had his full attention now.

"What?" Now Darry looked uncertain. He glanced over his shoulder and caught sight of me in the hall, half doubled over laughing. If possible, though, that just made him look even more guarded.

"Ponyboy entered our Hometown Hero contest. The grand prize is a trip for you and your brother to fly up to St. Louis and watch the Cardinals play the Philadelphia Phillies on the seventeenth. Afterward, we'll drop you back at your hotel for dinner. You'll have a small cash stipend to enjoy the activity of your choice that evening before flying home the next day."

Darry's eyes narrowed. "Come on," he shook his head. "Who put you up to this?" He looked back at me again. And then, after a beat, he hollered, "Soda!!"

"Darry," I gasped, still laughing, "it ain't a joke!"

He smirked at me as I stumbled out of the hallway to stand next to him. "Oh, yeah? Then why do you find it so funny, little man?"

"I can't help it," I gasped, clutching my sides. Even the guys on the porch were chuckling now. I doubled over again as Soda skidded into the living room to see what Darry was hollering at him for. He had on nothing but the black pants. "It's funny how you're so sure someone's pulling your leg!"

Darry was irritated now. "Look," he said to Soda and me, "this is going too far…"

"Hold on a sec," I said, trotting into our room. Soda tailed me, confused.

"Hey, Pony," he asked as I rooted around on the desk, lifting my binder and pulling out the drawers. "what's up?"

"You'll see," I said as I dug the wrinkled newspaper ad from the back of the drawer. It told all about the contest, and the entry form was missing.

Soda was like my shadow, following me back out to the living room. But I was too late. Darry had a piece of worn notebook paper in his hands and was reading it intently, his brow furrowed up. The essay. My essay. I froze up then. I'd never really considered winning, and I'd never really thought it out this far. I felt my ears begin to burn as Soda jabbed me in the ribs with his elbow, his eyebrows rising like a question mark.

And then Darry lowered the letter. He just looked at the floor for a minute, and I held my breath. Then he crossed the room in two strides and flung an arm around me. "Pony, you wrote this? About me?" His eyes were shiny. He did his best to keep his face away from the men still stranded out on our porch.

"It's got your name in there, don't it?" I shook my head.

"Thanks," he said, his eyes sort of wide. He sounded dazed. He still looked sorta puzzled. But then he shook himself a little and hurried to the door to invite them inside, even though he still didn't seem to understand it. Soda, meanwhile, was slowly catching on, too. He buttoned Darry's white shirt hastily.

Devenger asked us a bunch of questions, and before he could start in on describing the prize again, I swallowed hard and looked at Darry and asked,

"Does the prize have to for me and Darry?" Everyone looked at me like I was from the moon. Darry and Soda probably wondered if I was delirious again. "I mean, Darry has to go," I said hastily, before I had a chance to think twice about it, "but that essay…it won't mean anything if I go."

Now everyone was puzzled. I knew they wouldn't understand it, at least not at first. Hell, I probably would look back later and kick myself, too. "This is about Darry, about Darry getting to just be a kid again," I said. They still looked confused. "Darry," I said, shaking my head, "I can't go, and neither can Soda." Soda looked at me like I'd stabbed him with Brutus' dagger.

"Pony," Darry said quietly, "what are you talking about?"

"I want you to ask Tim," I said. Darry's eyes widened, and he started to say something. "It has to be Tim," I said. Then I looked at the three confused men and asked, "Is that okay? Can Darry's friend, Tim, take my place?"

The three of them looked at each other, and then Devenger, Darry, and Soda all looked at August Busch. Somehow, it was suddenly up to the owner of the St. Louis Cardinals. It wouldn't have made a lick of sense to any of them if I told them a ratty piece of paper with a lone palm tree sketched on it had put the idea in my head. But when I didn't look away from their bewildered stares, they must have decided I was serious.

"Well," August Busch said, rubbing his chin, "I don't see the harm in it, if you're sure that's what you want, son."

I nodded. When I looked at Soda, he no longer had that betrayed look on his face. He grinned and punched my shoulder, shaking his head. I knew he was still disappointed, but I also knew he understood it now.

They took a few more photos of us, and then Devenger left Darry with a glossy folder full of papers and releases he and Tim would have to sign in order to go on the trip. He showed the men out, and he stood on the porch watching them go. I knew he was trying to work out just how it was that the owner of the St. Louis Cardinals had spent an hour in our cramped living room.

* * *

A/N: All right. Crucify me if you want. I will never regret letting Darry have a little fun. And don't give me any flack about Tim. He needs a taste of paradise, even if it isn't quite the flavor he'd imagined.


	20. Chapter 20

_**Std Disclaimer: I don't own anything even remotely relating to the Outsiders, but this is my own work. Blah, blah, blah.**_

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No sooner than the door closed, Soda let out a whoop and pulled me off of my feet. Darry joined in, and the three of us stood there squashed together, hugging and grinning until Soda caught sight of the kitchen clock. Then he cursed a blue streak and grabbed Darry's keys. At the front door, he looked back and said,

"Man, I almost wish I didn't have to go to that poker game tonight," Soda shook his head. Even though he wasn't going to St. Louis, he was still keyed up about the whole thing.

"It's good money," Darry nodded. "You should go."

Turning back to me, Darry just shook his head again. "Pony, are you sure you don't want to go? I mean, it's really nice of you to think of Tim, but—"

I cut him off. "I'm sure."

Darry, who'd been given a framed copy of my essay, read through it again. "The stuff you said," Darry started but was unable to finish. He tried again. "You—it—It means a lot," he said.

I shrugged. "I know you don't think I see your side of things. Maybe I didn't used to," I said, trying to find the right words. "Maybe I'll still forget sometimes, too."

He dragged me against him with one arm in a hard, quick hug. Then he just looked down at that folder in his hand again. "I can't believe that just happened. Am I gonna wake up in the hospital and find out I fell from the Johnson's roof and landed on my head?"

I grinned. That wasn't unlike how I'd felt, earlier. Well, not the roof, exactly, but that I was dreaming.

Darry was all lit up like Christmas, in a way I hadn't seen since before Mom and Dad died. After sitting in the armchair and flipping through the folder about a dozen times, he grinned over at me on the couch, where I was trying to get interested in a book. "Man, Pony, I can't sit still tonight. Let's go hunt up Tim, see if we can get _him_ to believe it's real."

We found him out at the stables, exchanging flip remarks with Cherry Valance as he mucked out a stall. Tim likes horses about as much as Sodapop, and it isn't unusual for him to hang around the stables when he's not working. Says it's his own personal version of a halfway house. A distraction from a life of crime.

Once he finished up and Cherry had taken off in her little Corvair, Darry told him about the trip. Tim didn't believe it, either, until Darry showed him the folder and my framed essay. My ears went red again as he read through it.

"Well, hey, Hemingway," he said finally, after staring down at that frame for much longer than it should have taken him to read it. "Thanks for the invite. Can't accept it, though."

He wouldn't look at me or Darry. He just handed the frame back and then turned back to the stall.

"You have to," I said quietly. "Otherwise, it isn't my wish."

He turned then, and he met my eyes. His were flat, emotionless. He was really good at cards, because no matter what he was thinking, you'd never know it unless he wanted you to.

"How the hell can your wish be for me and Darry to take this trip instead of the two of you? Did that barn door scramble those brains of yours?"

"You know how," I said, and shrugged to show him it was no big sacrifice. And it wasn't, anymore. That should have surprised me, but it didn't.

Tim Shepard looked at me so long and so hard that I wanted to curl up in a ball on the dirt until he stopped. Instead, I just tightened my jaw and held that stare. It was worse than when Tim found me and Curly burning each other's fingers half off with the tip of a cigarette, trying to see who would yellow out first. This time, though, Tim didn't have another head to knock mine against, so he finally looked away with a shrug.

"Suit yourself, Hemingway. Don't cry to me later, wishing you had gone, after all."

Darry clapped Tim on the back and said, "I told Pony maybe we could bowl a few frames down at the Darby. Want to come with us?"

I thought it would be the last place Tim would ever be caught dead, but Tim just shrugged. "Why not? Sounds like some good, wholesome fun. My probation officer would choke on his own surprise. That sounds like reason enough."

We rolled home just after midnight. Darry was still in high spirits, and he teased me about dropping the ball behind myself in the sixth frame of our first game. I'd had to go chasing after it, and I probably lit the whole place red with my embarrassment. But I went to bed smiling for the first time in a long time, myself.

* * *

The next morning, I was the first one up. Soda, who'd crept in around two, was sprawled on his back on his bed, still wearing the black pants. Darry's white shirt was flung over the desk chair. There was quiet in the house, so I knew Darry was still in his room, too.

I cooked up a bunch of eggs, biscuits, and bacon. I had a feeling word would have gotten out by now and we'd have a few more guests for breakfast.

I wasn't wrong. It was a mad house in pretty short order. Two-Bit came barreling in first, followed closely by Steve, who wanted to know how much Soda had cleared at Buck's the night before. Two-Bit demanded evidence of the contest. Darry, his hair still all wild from sleep, picked Two-Bit up, moved him out of the doorway, and dropped him again, handing him the glossy team folder.

"Proof," he yawned, dragging a shirt down across his chest just before Soda took a flying leap onto his back. Darry elbowed him off with a grin, but then he saw Soda was still in the black pants and told him to put on something else if he was going to horse around.

The second Soda returned, Steve called out, "Hey, Sodapop! How'd it go last night?"

Soda cracked a huge grin. "Ninety-six bucks!" he cried, slapping Steve on the back.

"Way to go," Darry said, looking impressed. "Do you still have it, or did you celebrate it away?"

Soda shook his head and dropped the biggest roll of money I'd ever seen on the table. Two-Bit reached for it, his eyes huge, but Darry snatched it up with one hand and smacked him upside the head with the other. But he was still grinning, so Two-Bit just offered him a lopsided smile and tried to hit him back.

Darry showed off the essay, passing the frame around the table. I just turned my full attention to breakfast and tried not to go red again. Soda pretended to be mortally wounded as he explained how I'd given up my spot to Tim. And Tim, who came sauntering in right about then, socked him in the shoulder.

"Tryin' to steal my glory, Sodapop?"

Soda shook his head. "Nah. Pony's right. It's supposed to be Darry's crack at childhood again. Can't be a kid if me or Pony was around to remind him of all those grownup responsibilities."

Soda digs real good, and I was pretty glad he'd explained it to the guys so I didn't have to. Darry cracked a fond grin at us.

"Yeah, well, you know I won't be able to stop thinkin' about the two of you alone out here. You're liable to burn the house down before I get back."

But he was only kidding. Soda and I leapt on him, attacking him where he sat, knuckling his head until he laughed at us to lay off already and get breakfast before it burned.


	21. Chapter 21

_**Std Disclaimer: I don't own anything even remotely relating to the Outsiders, but this is my own work. Blah, blah, blah.**_

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The following Friday, I got a package from the Raton City Juvenile Military Camp. They had called on Monday with a whole lot of questions about what size of clothes and shoes I wore and whether I was allergic to anything.

The package contained two sets of fatigues, a pair of boots, and a full dress uniform with glossy black shoes. There was even a set of dog tags with my last name and first initial. _Jeez, _I thought. _They really go all out. _A letter enclosed with them directed me to try them on to make sure they fit and to call the phone number at the bottom of the page to tell them I received the package. There were also several packets of information about what I had to bring with me and what I _couldn't_ bring with me, rules and regulations, and general camp information.

I was just tying the left boot when Soda came in from work. He hooted with laughter. "Man, Pony," he chortled, "you look like you just stepped out of G.I. Joe magazine!"

I turned away from the cracked mirror over the bathroom sink and gave him a dirty look. Then I took off the cap and looked at my hair.

"They're going to make me cut my hair," I complained. Soda stopped smiling. He knew how miserable I'd been when I came back from Windrixville.

"It'll grow back," he said. "It did last time, right?" I nodded. He tugged the back of my hair. "Besides, y'all don't have to bleach it this time, either."

He tugged again, and I swatted him, pulling off the drab green t-shirt with the letters 'RCJMC' across the front. Soda watched me button myself into the dress slacks and choker collared jacket. I slid into the shoes and tried the cap before pulling on the gloves. Soda whistled low.

"Wow," he said, staring at me. I stared back, but I made a face at my reflection. "Hey, it's not so bad. You look…tuff."

I glanced over my shoulder at him and was surprised to see he wasn't joking. But I still didn't like what I saw. It felt like playing dress up. It felt all wrong. It felt out of control.

I couldn't get out of those clothes fast enough. I hung them up carefully, though, because the letter had said to take good care of them, and I sure didn't want any marines mad at me.

Soda, who'd returned to our room just as I was finishing up, had a serious look on his face. "There's gonna be a lot of guys in worse trouble than you at that camp, I'll bet. Real JD's. You watch your back, Pony."

That hadn't occurred to me, although it should have. I pushed it to the back of my mind as I called the camp and verified that I had received their package. A woman there read off a checklist of everything that was supposed to be in it, and I agreed that everything was there. She then advised me to pack my duffle according to the regulations in the packet and report to the bus station no later than 8 a.m. on Monday, June 19th.

I hung up the phone. June 19th. Just over a week away. The day after Darry and Tim would return from St. Loius. I'd barely have time to say goodbye. Monday, June 19th to Saturday, August 25th. Just over nine weeks. I'd never been away from my brothers for that long. And judging by the disaster that both of my runaway weeks had been, I wasn't sure I liked the idea of those nine weeks at all.

I looked up Raton City on a map. It was a tiny little dot in northeastern New Mexico, just shy of the Colorado border. I used the tip of my pencil to measure out the miles between Tulsa and Raton City, and I lost count at four hundred eighty miles. It felt like the other side of the world.

After I'd read all of the packets, I was jumpier than ever about the place. They got you up at the crack of dawn and worked you until sundown. Seems like the list of rules in the place was longer than the list of daily activities, which was pretty long. There were pictures of guys wearing tight looks of concentration, pictures of guys marching, and pictures of guys in what looked like a cafeteria. Everything was in military terms. You slept in barracks, you ate in a chow hall, and you went to the head if you had to use the bathroom.

It was run by the United States Marine Corps, which I thought I remembered the judge telling me. Our "counselors" would be actual soldiers who would also be our drill instructors, and the camp was run by someone named Colonel Stuart Messner. The packet, which apparently was meant more for the parents of the campers, promised to straighten all us delinquents out by summer's end. I thought that was pretty corny, because I tried to picture that place straightening Dally or Tim out and couldn't do it.

I stacked the literature on my desk. Darry had to sign a few pages, and I knew he'd want to read every word of it. Soda popped his head into our room just then and said Darry was out front offering to take us to the Tastee Freeze. Since he barely ever does that, me and Soda hit the porch at a run before he could change his mind.

* * *

The more I tried not to think about that camp, the closer it rushed. Everything was happening at warp speed that summer. By Thursday night, Darry was so keyed up about that trip that none of us could sit still. We played football out in the lot until well after sundown. It would have been baseball, but there weren't enough of us to man the bases and the outfield and still have enough for a batting team. With football, you can pretty much just split up and start tackling each other.

Despite falling into bed at after eleven, Darry was up and wide-eyed with the sun the next day. He had to be, because he had to work a full eight hours before racing home to shake the dust off before the car they were sending arrived for him at five. He barely had time to say hello and goodbye before racing out the door to get the work day over with.

I was still enjoying the novelty of summer, trying not to think about Monday. I wandered over to Two-Bit's place, but his little sister said he was working until three. Soda bought me a Pepsi at the DX, but the place was busier than I'd seen it in a long time, so he had no time for me. Bored already, I wandered out to Dixon pond for a swim.

It was deserted, which was unusual, but I figured people were probably still spooked over the whole Carl Rossey thing. In fact, as I peeled off my t-shirt and jeans, I wondered why I wasn't spooked to be there, myself.

The water was cool, and I stayed there for a long time, until my skin started to feel tight, signaling a light burn. I walked back to the DX, kicking at a rock for company, thinking again about how I wished I could just stay here with Darry and Soda and get a job for the summer. I'd never had this much trouble finding something to occupy my time before, and it was a weird feeling. You'd think a guy just out of school, with nearly three months of freedom stretched out in front of him would just be enjoying the nothing of it all. But I didn't. I wanted action, which was strange because I'd probably have more than my fill of it after ten minutes at that camp.

Things had slowed down a little at the DX, so Soda bought me another Pepsi and we sat down on the tailgate of the pickup Steve was under. I shrugged.

"Don't tell me you're bored already," he smirked and snapped his chrome-shining cloth at me.

I shrugged again. "I don't know," I said, squinting into the early afternoon sun, "everything just seems on hold. I wanted to get a job this summer, help you and Darry out with things, but this stupid camp thing…" I trailed off.

"Yeah," he agreed, taking the Pepsi from me for a long swallow. "I bet Darry can't get the day over fast enough," he grinned, nudging me with his elbow.

"Probably not," I agreed, taking the bottle back. "Buck makin' you work tomorrow?"

Soda shook his head. "Nope. Told him I probably better look after you with Darry gone," he teased.

"Yeah? Well, who's gonna look after you?" I retorted. I get into trouble for not using my head, but it's things like losing track of time or forgetting to take the garbage out. For Soda, anything goes.

I goofed off with Soda until around four, and then I started home. It felt like the temperature had jumped ten degrees, so I was grateful when Two-Bit eased up beside me, though he laid on the horn and sent me jumping almost out of my shoes. He was still cackling when I ducked inside out of the sun.

Because Two-Bit never takes the obvious route, we meandered around town, stopping at the package store for smokes, and at the drugstore for who knows what. When somebody else is driving, you don't have a choice where they take you. Two-Bit struck up a conversation with two pretty blondes at the soda fountain, so I figured maybe that was his aim, all along. When Burt, the owner, started giving me suspicious looks, I put back the magazine I'd been flipping through before he could tell me to go to the library if I wanted to read and sauntered up to Two-Bit at the counter in time to see him strike out. The girls hopped off their stools, and the tallest one, who was still a good foot shorter than Two-Bit, tossed her hair and said she didn't keep company with hoods.

He took it in stride, but I noticed we didn't stop anywhere after that. Two-Bit drove me home, and when we pulled up, Darry's truck was already parked outside. I thought he'd be cross since I hadn't left a note or anything, but he was too busy packing.

"Hey, Darry," I said, watching him hustle between the closet and the dresser and back to the duffle at the foot of his bed.

"Pony, where've you been?" he asked absently.

I shrugged. "Around."

"You look like you've been in the sun all day," he said after glancing at me briefly. Then he just kept packing.

"I went swimming," I shrugged.

"You went to Dixon pond?" Now he was cross.

"Sure."

He shook his head and sighed heavily. But that was the end of it, I guess, because he pushed past me and clomped down the hall to the bathroom, where he started tossing stuff into a shaving kit. He was a mile away if he was two inches. "I don't want you going there," he said a minute later. Guess that wasn't the end of it.

"Darry, what's going to happen? Rossey's in jail."

He frowned. He didn't like it. There was no good reason, but he didn't like it. "Just don't go there, Pony."

I rolled my eyes. "Where am I gonna go swimming, then?"

"City pool," he replied nonchalantly.

"Nothing but socs at the city pool," I muttered under my breath. "And he thinks the pond is dangerous."

"Hey," Darry said loudly. "I don't want any lip from you."

"What's the matter, Darry?" I asked, watching him zip the duffel and search the room.

"Nothing," he said, patting his back pocket to make sure his billfold was in it. But his voice was flat.

I didn't tell him he was supposed to be in a good mood. I didn't tell him he should be flying high just about now. I sure thought it, though. I left him alone, still turning circles in his room.

Soda came in a few minutes later, and when he caught me moping about Darry's mood, he ambled to the back of the house to coax whatever he could out of Darry. Soda's an expert at that. They should hire him to do interrogations. He could get anyone to admit anything.

Darry was practically jumping out of his skin by five as me and Soda sat on the porch and watched him load his duffle into the trunk of the sleek black sedan they sent for him. He seemed a little less grumpy, though, so whatever Soda had done worked at least a little bit.

Tim strolled up just as me and Soda tackled Darry by way of goodbye. He put his own bag in with Darry's and cracked a rare, sincere smile—most of his are cynical or grim. He squinted down at me in the sunlight.

"Are you sure about this, Ponyboy?"

I smirked back at him. "Too late even if I wasn't. That's your name on the plane ticket, not mine."

He shook his head. I knew he thought I'd gone off the deep end. But so long as Darry understood (and I think he finally did), everything was okay.

Darry gave us one final look. He still seemed a little off, but the corners of his mouth twitched up as he said, "Don't burn the house down, don't flood the house out, don't wreck the truck, and don't break any bones." Then he squooshed us both against him in a quick hug and ducked into the backseat of the car. Me and Soda stayed at the curb until they turned the corner and vanished from sight. That's when Soda dropped a hand on my shoulder, leaned in real close, and giggled,

"Mr. Muscles is scared to get on the airplane."

I looked at Soda and we burst into hysterical laughter, laughing like a couple of loons until Two-Bit marched out onto the porch and demanded to know what was so funny. And then we looked at him, looked at each other, and just laughed harder.


	22. Chapter 22

Std Disclaimer: I don't own anything even remotely relating to the Outsiders, but this is my own work

_**Std Disclaimer: I don't own anything even remotely relating to the Outsiders, but this is my own work. Blah, blah, blah.**_

* * *

Darry called us a few hours later to let us know he'd made it to St. Louis. Having made it in one piece, he was in good spirits again. Soda and I elbowed each other both trying to listen to him on the phone, and Soda asked him about a million questions about everything. What was the hotel like? Had they seen the stadium yet? What was the plane ride like? It took all we had to keep straight faces when Soda asked him that.

But after Soda ran out of questions, I reminded Darry that he needed to forget about us and the house and just have a good time. I knew it wasn't really possible and that he could never really go back to the guy he'd been before the accident. But I guess I wanted him to get as close as he could, at least. The last thing Darry said was, "Remember. Stay out of trouble."

After lounging around the house all of Saturday morning, though, Soda was itchy and restless. It wasn't in him to sit still that long. An entire day cooped up in the house would have killed him. It was Steve who got the bright idea to drive down to the rodeo in Muskogee, and for once he didn't seem irritated that Soda asked me to go along, but I think that was because Two-Bit was along and he figured we'd keep each other company.

It was hot and dusty, and by the time we got down to the rodeo, we were all downright giddy, glad to get out of the cramped quarters of Steve's old Ford. Two-Bit charmed the pants off the two women who were taking tickets while me, Soda, and Steve ducked through a broken section of fence down by the stables. Since we were dressed like a lot of the hands, no one really paid us much attention as we worked our way back around to the stands.

Since Two-Bit had to pay his way in, Soda and Steve bought him a beer. Since Steve already turned eighteen, he didn't even have to fake it anymore. He just bought one beer three times in five minutes. If the two girls working the concession stand noticed, they didn't let on. The beer kept Soda distracted enough to keep him patient while waiting for the barrel racers and calf ropers to finish up and get to the good stuff. Soda loves the saddle Bronc riding and the bull riding. He merely tolerates the rest. Steve would have been content to watch it all if it hadn't been for Soda. I listened to them bicker back and forth about which rider would win and wished Steve had thought to get me a drink, too. But that's Steve. I'm more of an afterthought with him. Just Soda's kid brother.

I poked Soda in the ribs. "Hey! Either give me some of your beer or give me some money," I joked.

Soda looked over at me with a smirk. "Yeah, that'd go over real well if Darry ever found out," he chuckled, slapping a handful of change into my hand. "Hurry up, or you'll miss the first of the Bronc riders."

I wandered down to the concession area. The line was pretty long. So much for hurrying back. It probably would have moved faster if the two girls working the stand hadn't been busy working the men that came through line. I'd hear them order a drink and leave with a drink and a bag of peanuts or some popcorn. A couple of them even left with hot dogs. I figured the owner must have been some kind of genius, considering. Most of the rodeo crowd is male, no matter where you go. Having a couple of pretty, flirty girls work the stands could only increase profits. The guys left with dopey grins and lots of stuff they never intended to buy or consume.

So we crept forward at a snail's pace while those two girls played each new customer like a shiny fiddle. I distracted myself from the wait by watching another girl, who was loaded down with plastic bags full of concession cups, weave her way through the crowds. She had quite a delicate balancing act going, her slender arms wrapped around several bags at once. She had to peer around them since the stacks were so tall, she couldn't see over them. She kept getting bumped and jostled by folks, but she kept apologizing to them in a voice that sounded like warm honey. And then she got jostled one time too many.

Before I could consider the mile of people who'd gotten in line behind me, I darted out of place and caught four of the bags, leaving her free to scramble for the other four. She shifted hers around to take a look at me, and I felt heat creep up my neck. Gosh, she was pretty. She had big, laughing brown eyes, and when she gave me a sweet smile, there were dimples in both cheeks. I'd never have thought someone as good lookin' as she was would be sort of shy. Soda's handsome and he knows it. He's never afraid to speak to anyone. But her honeyed voice dropped down to almost a whisper.

"Thanks," she said, using her free hand to tuck a section of paper-straight strawberry-blonde hair behind her ear. Then she seemed to realize she was staring at me and she looked away.

"These for the stand?" I asked finally, as we just stood there not looking at each other. Even though we were. That hair of hers…I couldn't stop sneaking glances. She blushed a little when she caught me at it.

"Yeah. C'mon," she said, and she started making her way through the crowd again. I followed. I didn't apologize to anyone. She started up again, though somehow people didn't bump into her as often now that she was carrying less.

I stood outside the door and waited for her to unload her armful. The two girls behind the counter squinted over at me and made flirty cracks about knights in dusty old jeans and t-shirts. Honey girl just blushed again and told them to hush up. Then she came and got the cups I was holding and put those on the long counter beside the soda fountain. She looked glad to leave the stand.

"My cousins," she said apologetically. Then, with a hopeful grin, she said, "I don't suppose you'd mind helping me with another load of those."

I didn't know that I'd be able to open my mouth to answer, so I shrugged. Strangely, my voice worked just fine, though, and without any conscious input from me. "Why not? Beats getting back in that line."

She looked at the line, which had doubled in size since I'd left it, and her eyes widened. "Wow. Tell you what," she said, "if you help me, I'll buy whatever it is you came down for."

I just grinned dopily back at her and nodded. I felt my own face go up in flames as she timidly grabbed my hand and pulled me along after her. But I figured she knew where we were going and I didn't, and she didn't want to lose me in the crowd.

"I'm Katie Lee," she called back over her shoulder. "Harper. My uncle manages this arena," she said.

"I'm Ponyboy," I answered, waiting for the surprised look. But she just grinned back at me and said it was pretty fitting, seeing as how we were at the rodeo.

The crowd got thicker just then, and I lost her hand, so I just concentrated on the denim cutoffs and sleeveless seersucker blouse she wore and tried not to lose her. She stopped, though and looked back to make sure she hadn't lost me.

Finally, we ditched the crowd as we reached a narrow doorway that led out of the public areas. Shortly after that, we were standing by a pickup loaded with boxes and several more bags of cups.

"We have to take _all_ of these?" I asked. Soda was probably already wondering where I'd gotten off to. I hoped he wasn't missing the Broncs to look for me.

"Nope," she said. "Just another eight." She laughed at my relief. Then she seemed to realize I probably wasn't here alone. "I'm sorry, Ponyboy. Let's hurry so I can let you get back to your group."

I shrugged. "It's okay," I lied. "If they saw those lines, they sure wouldn't wonder."

After we dropped off those last armloads, we stood beside the side door and just looked at each other, then looked out at the people passing by, and then looked back again. If I didn't go back to the gang soon, the guys were gonna think I'd been jumped or something. But I couldn't get my feet to walk away. And then Katie Lee reached out and grabbed my hand, deciding for me.

"C'mon," she said, "I want to show you something."

She led me all over the place, it seemed like, without showing me a thing or saying a word until we came up on a shady corridor away from the late afternoon sun. It led to some restrooms and then, further out, to the stalls. A few people came and went, but we were mostly alone back there. I wondered what in the world she was gonna show me out there and was just about to ask when she whipped around and planted her mouth on mine, not so shy anymore.

Now, I've been kissed before, but only by girls one of the gang was dating but not serious with. A lot of those not-so-serious girls seemed to get a real kick out of seeing Soda's kid brother turn red. But this was real. It was meant for me in particular, and it felt real nice. My heart jolted up a notch as I felt her shy hand curl up against the back of my neck, sending shivers down my back. She was soft, and she smelled good. I'm not sure if she stepped or stumbled backward, closer to the wall behind her, but I didn't expect it and I stumbled forward after her. And it just so happened that in the stumbling, my hand lit on the wrong place altogether. Actually, it would've been just the right place if a voice hadn't boomed out like God on a tear.

"KATIE, WHAT THE HELL—"

You never saw two people jump apart faster, but it wasn't fast enough. A guy that seemed about twice my size and half again as tall glowered at me as if he was a bull and I was wearin' head to toe red. I can say with the confidence of a guy who's seen a lot of angry brothers, boyfriends, and even a husband once (Soda doesn't always discriminate as much as he should) that this guy was none too happy to see me.

"Oh, shit!" It sounded funny in her soft, lilting voice. "My brother, Harvey. You better run, Ponyboy!" She grabbed my shoulders, turned me around, and gave me a shove as he started stomping our way.

I don't know what possessed me. I should have been hot-footin' it out of there, but I turned back to Katie Lee and pressed my lips to hers for a precious few seconds. Then she shoved me away with a shocked smile. And since Harvey was bearing down on us now, I tossed her a reckless, Sodapop-style grin and ran for my damn life.

I checked back every now and then, surprised to see that bear of a guy still on my tail. And he'd collected some friends along the way. A skinny guy with dirty looking blonde hair, a dark-haired guy with a missing front tooth, and a guy who could've been Harvey's weight class twin were working their way around in different directions, trying to corner me. I didn't stop running full tilt until I tripped over Two-Bit's feet and crashed into Soda, who caught me before I felt flat on my face.

"We gotta go!" I shouted, looking back behind me. Soda looked, too, saw the four redwoods crashing through the stands after me, and grabbed Two-Bit's shirt, tugging him clean off the bench. About that time, Steve caught on and was on his feet in a dead run before Two-Bit's beer hit the ground.

Big as they were, they weren't slow. We tried to lose them in the concourse area, but every time we ducked behind this crowd or that one, one of them would notice us and we'd have to take off again. Finally, though, we thought we'd lost them. Steve frowned. We were all gasping so hard for air that he could barely get words out, but when he did, they were cross.

"What the hell are we running for? We can take those guys!"

Soda panted back, "Hell, I know that. You know that. Two-Bit and Pony know it, too. But if me or Pony gets into a lick more trouble, that's the end of everything. So—"

Steve's eyes went wide and he smacked Soda's chest, gesturing a ways down the concourse. "Go!"

It seemed to take forever, but we finally lost them again and made our way out to the dirt lot where Steve's car was parked, no sign of Katie Lee's bodyguards anywhere. We all flopped against one part of his car or another. Soda flung himself and me against the trunk, Two-Bit leaned against the right rear quarter-panel, and Steve hunched down, hands on his knees, next to the rear driver's-side door.

When any one of us could talk, Soda breathed, "Pony, what in Sam Hill did you get up to all that time?"

I gave the barest of details, partly because I was still so out of breath, but partly because it wasn't anybody's business but mine. But there wasn't any way to leave out the most embarrassing parts of the story. "….and then I ran," I finished, still breathing hard.

"Ho, ho!" Soda's face split open into a wide, delighted grin. "Lookee here! Ponyboy's finally discovered girls!"

Two-Bit slapped my back heartily. "Lesson one, Romeo," he joked, "is never sneak off in dark corners without making sure the coast is clear!"

I was going to argue, but Two-Bit straightened up and cried, "We've been spotted!"

Steve swore viciously, and we all dove into the car. "Those are some mighty persistent thugs!" he called out, adjusting the rear view to watch them draw closer. We laughed wildly, the fun-scared way you laugh on a roller coaster, as Steve peeled out of the lot.

When we'd passed the "Muskogee City Limits" sign, Two-Bit hooted loudly. "Man," he said, shaking his head, "Darry's gonna pitch headfirst into an early grave if that's the kind of trouble you get into just _kissin' _a girl!"

Soda and Steve roared with laughter. I just lay my head back on the seat, closed my eyes, and tried to memorize those brief moments with Katie Lee Harper, knowing that soft, sweet kiss would be the benchmark for any girls that came after.

* * *

A/N: WHOO! That was a LOT of fun! Don'tcha think?


	23. Chapter 23

Std Disclaimer: I don't own anything even remotely relating to the Outsiders, but this is my own work

_**Std Disclaimer: I don't own anything even remotely relating to the Outsiders, but this is my own work. Blah, blah, blah.**_

--

After the afternoon's excitement, even Soda didn't want to tempt fate. I cooked up a fresh chocolate cake, since the four of us had made short work of the last one the night before. Me and Soda convinced the guys to stay in with us that night. We hadn't really said so to each other, but we were both afraid that if we went out someplace we'd get into some worse kind of trouble without meaning to, and Darry would regret ever going. So instead, we horsed around in the living room, playing Blackjack and gin and eating the entire fresh pan of chocolate cake I'd made. Steve and Two-Bit took turns seeing which of them could tell the lewdest story about me and various girls we knew until my ears turned so red that Two-Bit said I looked like Rudolph's bastard cousin.

I fell asleep right on the living room floor when they switched to poker. I'm not any good at it, and Soda says that's because everything I'm thinking shows on my face. I don't think that's true at all. Otherwise, I'd probably have been arrested by now.

--

I guess Soda couldn't wake me or didn't try, because I woke up flung out on my back right where I'd fallen to sleep, between the couch and the coffee table. The place was a mess, and I wondered if Darry would kill us before or after he told us about the trip. I decided not to find out and started picking up crusty plates and empty glasses.

It was late morning, and Soda was already at work. He wouldn't get out until four-thirty, and Darry wasn't due back until around six, so there was plenty of time for me to kill. I baked up yet another chocolate cake, because I figured Darry would want some when he got home. Then I flopped on my bed with a book I'd already read three times and pretended to read it, but really I just thought a lot about the day before. It still made me grin.

Soda fiddled with Darry's truck after he got off of work, changing the oil, cleaning the crust off the battery terminals, and checking the tires. I did the laundry since Darry wouldn't have time and he and Soda would still need fresh clothes for work. I even ironed the dress shirt and slacks that Soda had borrowed for the big poker night at the Ace, though I'm not as good at it as Darry. But I knew Soda had no patience for it.

When the same sleek black car finally pulled up to the curb just after six-fifteen, Soda and I exploded off the porch like two rockets. Darry barely had time to drop his duffle before we leapt on him, making him stumble backward a step or two. Tim ducked out of the car with his trademark lazy grin, shouldering his own bag, and followed the three of us into the house.

"Man, I'm beat," Darry admitted, stretching and yawning. He tossed his duffle in the corner and kicked his boots off by the door. If I'd done that, he'd be yelling at me to put them in my room. He looked more relaxed than I'd ever seen him, though, and he was still cracking easy grins, so I didn't say a word even to tease him.

He ducked into the fridge, surprised to see a whole chocolate cake. But he promptly dug it out and dropped it on the table with four forks while Soda grabbed the milk and a couple beers. Darry barely sat down before Soda exploded.

"So, c'mon, Darry!" he half-yelled, "who won?"

Darry grinned. "We did," he said.

Tim just watched as we went back and forth, firing questions. He let Darry answer them all. No, they didn't get airsick. Yeah, the hotel room was really fancy with a little refrigerator called an honor bar that you just took what you wanted from. Well, no, he supposed they'd have had to pay for it if he hadn't won the trip as a prize. They had steak and lobster in the hotel dining room, and they got room service for breakfast each morning.

The stadium was huge, and there were more people in it watching that game than Darry'd ever seen in one place. He nearly threw up when they took him down to the field and let him shake the players hands, and if that was bad enough, he almost fainted when they let him throw out the ceremonial first pitch. Yeah, the photographers took a lot of pictures. He could barely see for all the flashing.

Then Darry leapt up from the table and rooted around in his bag. He pulled one cap down on my head and another cap down over Soda's. That was pretty tuff, but me and Soda nearly had to be picked up off the floor when he showed us the end all be all: a real St. Louis Cardinals game ball, signed by all the 1967 Cardinals, and a matching bat to go with it.

Tim finally had something to say then. He told me his were rightfully mine, and if I didn't take them he might knock me upside my fool head with the bat. But I refused to take them, and when he left our place two hours later, they were still zipped away in his bag. He gave me another one of those looks and just shrugged.

"Whatever you say, Hemingway. Someday, when somebody offers me big money for them, you'll be singing another tune."

I just gave him a drop-mouthed look and said, "You better not go sellin' those to anybody." He just smirked and slapped the side of my arm.

"Pick your lip up, kid, I was only kidding." And he winked at me on his way out the door.

Darry came up behind me as I stood on the porch and watched him go. He put a hand on my shoulder and said, "For a minute, it was like we were twelve years old again." He didn't have to add that it was back before Tim had been to prison and the worst thing to ever happen to either of them was when Darry broke his arm falling out of an apple tree at McNary's farm.

Back inside, Darry told us everything, from the rush he got throwing out that first pitch to the relief he felt when it wasn't half bad. He told us about the wrestling matches he and Tim had gone to the night before, after the game was over, and then he talked again about all the fancy food they'd stuffed down.

Finally, though, Darry flopped down on the couch with a plain old souvenir ball (not the signed one) and tossed it in the air over and over as Soda told him about our day at the rodeo. It was the perfect time to tell him, because he was still half off in his own world and merely chuckled when Soda told him I'd got caught with my hand on Katie Lee's chest and had to make a run for it.

Soda and I cleaned up the dishes from the cake. When we finished, Darry was still there, just tossing and catching, tossing and catching.

"Man, Pony," he sighed, "this weekend was the best in a long time. And Tim…well, I think he actually slept with his bat last night." We laughed. I couldn't picture that for a second. I reached out and caught the ball before Darry could.

"It's too bad I'm leaving tomorrow," I complained, "I won't get to see all those pictures until after camp."

Darry sat up. "Shoot, I almost forgot! Do you have everything packed? Did you remember everything?"

Just like that, he was back in big brother mode. He insisted on checking everything in my duffle because he says I'd forget my pants if he didn't check up on me. He even pulled two new Louis L'Amour novels out of his bag that he'd picked up for me in St. Louis. "Me and Soda aren't going to know what to do with ourselves around here without you," he said, handing me a stack of stamped, pre-addressed envelopes.

I rolled my eyes. "Geez, Darry, I ain't gonna forget our address." But I tucked them into the duffle, under some socks.

Darry's words echoed in my ears as I boarded the bus the next morning. Darry and Soda stood on the platform, making out like it was no big deal. But neither of them was smiling, and I saw them still standing there as we turned out of the station, headed for the highway.

--

End

Stay tuned for the sequel, Rite of Passage, which will chronicle Ponyboy's experiences at military camp.


End file.
